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TRANSCRIPT
How You
Can Be Led By The
Spirit of God
Kenneth E. Hagin
Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture
quotations in this volume are from the
King James Version of the Bible.
Seventh Printing 1986
ISBN 0-89276-500-3
In the U.S. write: In Canada
write:
Kenneth Hagin Ministries Kenneth Hagin
Ministries
P.O. Box 50126 P.O. Box 335
Tulsa, OK 74150-0126 Islington
(Toronto), Ontario
Canada, M9A
4X3
Copyright © 1978 RHEMA Bible Church
AKA Kenneth Hagin Ministries, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
Printed in USA
The Faith Shield is a trademark of
RHEMA Bible Church, AKA Kenneth Hagin
Ministries, Inc., registered with the U.S.
Patent and Trademark Office and therefore
may not be duplicated.
BOOKS BY
KENNETH E. HAG IN
*Redeemed From Poverty,
Sickness and Death *What Faith
Is
*Seven Vital Steps To Receiving
the Holy Spirit *Right and
Wrong Thinking
Prayer Secrets
*Authority of the Believer
(foreign only) *How To
Turn Your Faith Loose
The Key to Scriptural Healing
The Ministry of a Prophet
Praying To Get Results
The Present-Day Ministry of
Jesus Christ
The Gift of Prophecy
Healing Belongs to Us
The Real Faith
*The Interceding
Christian
How You Can Know the Will of
God
Man on Three Dimensions
The Human Spirit
Turning Hopeless Situations
Around
Casting Your Cares Upon the
Lord
Seven Steps for Judging
Prophecy
The Origin and Operation of
Demons
Demons and How To Deal
With Them
Ministering to the Oppressed
Bible Answers to Man's
Questions on Demons
Faith Food for Autumn
Faith Food for Winter
Faith Food for Spring
Faith Food for
Summer *The New
Birth *Why Tongues?
*In Him *God's
Medicine *You Can
Have What You Say
How To Write Your Own
Ticket With God *Don 't
Blame God * Words
Plead Your Case
*How To Keep
Your Healing
Laying on of Hands
A Better Covenant
Having Faith in Your Faith
Five Hindrances to Growth in
Grace
Why Do People Fall Under the
Power?
The Bible Way To Receive the
Holy Spirit
Godliness Is Profitable
I Went to Hell
Three Big Words
Obedience in Finances
His Name Shall Be Called
Wonderful
Paul's Revelation: The Gospel
of Reconciliation
How To Walk in Love
The Precious Blood of Jesus
Love Never Fails
How God Taught Me About Prosperity
Learning To Forget
The Coming Restoration
New Thresholds of Faith
Prevailing Prayer to Peace
Concerning Spiritual Gifts
Bible Faith Study Course
Bible Prayer Study Course
The Holy Spirit and
His Gifts *The
Ministry Gifts (Study
Guide)
Seven Things You Should Know About
Divine Healing
El Shaddai
Zoe: The God-Kind of Life
A Commonsense Guide to Fasting
Must Christians Suffer?
The Woman Question
The Believer's Authority
How You Can Be Led by the Spirit of
God
What To Do When Faith Seems Weak
and Victory Lost
The Name of Jesus
The Art of Intercession
Growing Up, Spiritually
Bodily Healing and the Atonement
Exceedingly Growing Faith
Understanding the Anointing
I Believe in Visions
BOOKS BY KENNETH
HAGIN JR. *Man's Impossibility
— God's Possibility
Because of Jesus
The Key to the
Supernatural *Faith
Worketh by Love
Blueprint for Building
Strong Faith *Seven
Hindrances to Healing
*The Past Tense of God's
Word
Healing: A Forever-Settled Subject
How To Make the Dream God Gave You
Come True
Faith Takes Back What the Devil's Stolen
'■The Prison Door Is Open — What Are
You Still Doing Inside?"
Itching Ears
Where Do We Go From Here?
How To Be a Success in Life
Get Acquainted With God
Showdown With the Devil
Unforgiveness
The Answer for Oppression
Is Your Miracle Passing You By?
Commanding Power
♦These titles are also available in Spanish.
Information about other foreign translations
of several of the above titles (i.e., Dutch,
Finnish, French, German, Indonesian,
Polish, Russian, Swahili, and Swedish) may
be obtained by writing to: Kenneth Hagin
Ministries, P.O. Box 50126, Tulsa,
Oklahoma 74150-0126.
Contents
1. The Lamp of the Lord ......................... 9
2. Man: An Eternal Spirit ................ 11
3. Spirit-Conscious
15
4. What is the Difference Between Spirit
and Soul? . . . . 17
5. The Saving of the Soul
21
6. Presenting the Body
25
7. Number One: The Inward Witness
29
8. Know-So Salvation
37
9. Fleeced!
39
10. Following the Witness
43
11. Number Two: The Inward Voice
47
12. Conscience: Voice of the Human
Spirit
49
13. Two Experiences
55
14. God Inside
59
15. Depend on Your Spirit
63
16. Tender-Hearted
67
17. Feelings: Voice of the Body ......... 71
18. Help From Within
77
19. Number Three: The Voice of the
Holy Spirit
79
20. Judging by the Word
83
21. My Spirit? or the Holy Spirit?
93
22. I Perceive
97
23. Spectacular Guidance
99
24. The Spirit Bade Me Go
103
25. Guidance Through Prophecy
105
26. Guidance Through Visions
115
27. Listen to Your Heart
123
28. How To Train the Human Spirit
127
29. Praying With the Spirit
139
Preface
God has been talking to me recently
about something I failed to do.
Twenty years ago, in February of 1959 in
El Paso, Texas, the Lord appeared to me in a
vision. He came into my room at 6:30 in the
afternoon, sat down in a chair by my
bedside, and talked with me for an hour and
a half. I tell more about this in the book, but
I want to emphasize something here first.
He talked to me about the ministry of
the prophet (Eph. 4:11,12). Then He said,
"I did not put prophets in the Church to
guide the New Testament Church. My
Word says, 'As many as are led by the Spirit
of God, they are the sons of God.' Now if
you will listen to me, I am going to teach you
how to follow my Spirit. Then, I want you to
teach my people how to be led of the Spirit."
I am ashamed that I have let twenty
years go by without teaching too much
along this line. Occasionally I would get
into the edge of it, but I did not really teach
on it.
So, in recent times, the Lord has stirred
me up and I am beginning to teach more in
this area. This book is a part of that
stirring.
The Lamp of the Lord
'For as many as are led by the
Spirit of God, they are
the sons of God." —Romans
8:14
"The Spirit itself (Himself) beareth
witness with our spirit, that we are
the children of God. "—Romans 8:16
"The spirit of man is the candle of the
Lord, searching all the inward parts
of the belly." —Proverbs 20:27
V^hildren of God can expect to be led by
the Spirit of God.
Another translation of Proverbs 20:27
reads, "The spirit of man is the lamp of the
Lord." Had this verse been written today it
might have read, "The spirit of man is the
light bulb of the Lord." What it means is:
God will enlighten us, He will guide us,
through our spirits.
Many times, however, we seek guidance
by means other than the way God said.
When we do, we get into trouble. We
sometimes judge how God is leading by
what our physical senses tell us. But
nowhere does God say that He will guide us
through our physical senses. Too often we
look at things from a mental standpoint and
endeavor to reason out things. But nowhere
does the Bible say He will guide us through
our mentality. The Bible does not say that
the body of man is the candle of the Lord,
nor that the mind of man is the candle of
the Lord. It says that the spirit of man is the
candle of the Lord.
10 How You Can Be Led By The Spirit
of God
God will guide us, He will enlighten us,
through our spirits.
Now before we can understand how God
does lead us and guide us through our
spirits we have to understand the nature of
man. We have to understand that man is a
spirit, that he has a soul, and that he lives
in a body.
Man: An Eternal Spirit
"And God said, Let us make man in
our image, after our likeness: . . .
So God created man in his own
image, in the image of God created
he him;"
—Genesis
1:26,27
Ma,
in is a spirit being. He is made in the
likeness of God. Jesus said that God is a
Spirit (John 4:24). So man must of a
necessity be a spirit.
Man is a spirit, he has a soul, and he lives
in a physical body (1 Thess. 5:23).
When the physical body of man is dead
and in the grave, the spirit lives on. That
part of man is eternal. Spirits can never die,
and man is a spirit. Paul is speaking of
physical death here:
For I am in a strait betwixt two,
having a desire to depart, and to be
with Christ; which is far better:
Nevertheless to abide in the flesh is
more needful for you.
-Philippians
1:23,24
Paul is going to live. Whether in the body or
out of the body, he is still going to live. If he
abides, or lives, in the flesh he can teach the
church at Philippi and be a blessing to
them. That would be more needful for
them. It would be far better for Paul
himself, however, to depart and be with
Christ. Paul was actually saying, "I am
going to live in the body or I am going to
depart and be with Christ."
11
12 How You Can Be Led By The Spirit
of God
Who is going to depart?
"/" am going to depart. Paul was not
talking about his body. His body was not
going to depart. Paul is talking about the
inward man, the spirit man, who lives
inside the body.
People sometimes ask, "Will we know
one another in Heaven?"
I always quickly ask, "Do you know one
another down here?"
You see, you are going to be there. If you
know one another down here, you will
know one another there. It is you who are
here—it is you who will be there.
"/ am going to depart," Paul says, "and be
with Christ which is far better." I like that!
If he had just said it was better, that would
have been good. But he said, "It is far
betterl"
Some false cults teach that when a man
dies he is dead like a dog. No, he is not.
Man is more than body. He is a spirit, he has
a soul, he lives in a body. Others say that
when man dies he is in soul sleep. The
Bible does not teach that. Some say the
spirit does go all right—but it comes back
as a cow, or a dog, or someone else.
Reincarnation is unscriptural and
unbiblical. Stay with the Word of God and
it will solve all your problems along this
line. Paul said,"/ am going to depart. / am
going to be with the Lord, which is far
better."
Paul preached the same truths and
taught the same facts to all the churches.
Here he uses different words to teach the
same blessed truth to the church at
Corinth:
. . . but though our outward man
perish, yet the inward man is
renewed day by day.
—2
Corinthians
4:16
There is an inward man. And there is an
outward man. The outward man is not the
real you. The outward man is only the
house in which you live. The inward man
is the real you. The inward man never
grows older. He is renewed day by day. He
is
Man: An Eternal Spirit
1
3
a spirit man.
What is our spirit? Keep in mind our
beginning texts. Romans 8:14 says, ". . . as
many as are led by the Spirit of God, they
are the sons of God." Then the 16th verse
gives us a little insight into how the Spirit of
God leads us, "The Spirit (Himself) beareth
witness with our spirit, that we are the
children of God." In other words, the Spirit
of God bears witness with the spirit of man.
Proverbs 20:27 says, "The spirit of man is
the candle of the Lord. . . " Since according
to these Scriptures God will guide us
through our spirits, we must find out what
our spirit is.
Jesus said to Nicodemus, "Except a man
be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of
God" (John 3:3).
Nicodemus, being natural could only
think naturally. So he said, "How can a man
be born when he is old? can he enter the
second time into his mother's womb, and be
born?" (v. 4).
Jesus was not talking about a physical
birth. He said, " . . . That which is born of
the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of
the Spirit is spirif (v. 6). He was talking
about a spiritual birth.
The part of man that is born again is his
spirit. His spirit receives Eternal Life—the
Life of God, the Nature of God. It is man's
spirit that is made a new creature in Christ.
Paul calls him "the inward man." Peter
calls him "the hidden man of the heart."
But let it be the hidden man of the
heart, in that which is not
corruptible, even the ornament of a
meek and quiet spirit, which is in the
sight of God of great price.
-1 Peter
3:4
When the Bible speaks of the heart, it is
speaking of the spirit. This is the real man.
It will help you in your believing and in
your faith to think like that. In the New
Testament, wherever the word heart is
used, substitute the word spirit and you
will
14 How You Can Be Led By The
Spirit of God
get a clearer picture of what it is talking
about. It is the spirit of man that is born
again.
Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is
a new creature: old things are passed
away; behold, all things are become
new.
-2 Corinthians
5:17
This is talking about the inward man. It
couldn't be talking about the outward man.
When you are born again and become a
new creature you do not get a new body.
The outward man is just like it was. If you
were bald before you were born again, you
are still bald afterwards. If you had brown
eyes before, you still have brown eyes. The
outward man does not change. God does not
do anything with the outward man. (You
have to do something with the outward
man. You find out what God wants you to
do with the outward man from the
Bible—and you do it.) God does something
with the inward man. He makes the man
on the inside a new man in Christ, a new
creature, a new creation.
Spirit - Conscious
"And the very God of peace sanctify
you wholly; and I
pray God your whole spirit and soul
and body be
preserved blameless unto the
coming of our Lord
Jesus Christ." -1
Thessalonians 5:23
-Laul begins with the inside, the
innermost part of man, the heart of his
being, which is his spirit, and comes to the
outside.
Yet most people misquote this verse.
They say, body, soul, and spirit. Why do
they put the body first? Because they are
more body-conscious than
spirit-conscious. Natural things mean
more to them than spiritual things. So they
put physical things first.
Sometimes we are more
mental-conscious because we live more in
the mental realm.
But man is a spirit being. We need to be
spirit-conscious. Spiritual things will
become more real to us the more
spirit-conscious we become.
If we are going to be led by the Spirit of
God—since we know that God's Spirit leads
us through our spirits—we must become
more spirit-conscious, or miss out on the
whole thing.
Put spirit first. Become more
spirit-conscious. Become more conscious of
the inward man. Realize you are a spirit
being. Realize that in the new birth you
became a new creation created by God in
Christ Jesus. It will help you
grow—spiritually.
Many years ago I began to think like
this—and at first I would say it to myself
out loud: I am a spirit being. I have a soul.
And I live in a body.
15
16 How You Can Be Led By The
Spirit of God
Saying that helped me become more
spirit-conscious. It helped my faith.
Because faith is of the spirit, or the heart.
What is the Difference Between Spirit
and Soul?
"For the word of God is quick, and
powerful, and sharper than any
two-edged sword, piercing even to
the dividing asunder of soul and
spirit. . . ."
-Hebrews
4:12
Ihe
le spirit and the soul are not the same.
Many years ago, back in the early 50's, I
began an intensive study on this subject. I
got books from the leading Bible schools
and seminaries, both Pentecostal and
denominational, to see what they taught on
the subject of man. None satisfied me. None
were actually scriptural. They were like
the Bible says, "in part." I asked leading
Bible scholars and ministers across the
nation. You would recognize some of their
names if I mentioned them. I even heard
someone ask one of the most well-known
ministers of today, "What is the difference
between the spirit and the soul?" He looked
startled and said, "I thought they were the
same." That was the answer I got from most
of the ministers I asked.
Yet how could they be the same? Paul,
by the Spirit of God, said they can be
divided by the Word of God. If you can
divide them, they cannot be the same.
Only the Word of God can divide the
spirit and the soul, however. The reason
we have not been able to distinguish
17
18 How You Can Be Led By The Spirit
of God
between them is we have not dug deep
enough into the Word. Years ago, in the
western part of the United States, they had
what we call "the gold rush." People rushed
out west. They were going to get rich in a
hurry. Most panned a little gold out of
creeks. Some found a few nuggets lying on
the ground. But if you really wanted to strike
it rich, you had to dig for it. You can skim
along on the surface of the Bible and pan
out a little gold here and there—and even
find a nugget occasionally. But if you
really want to strike it rich, you have to dig
down into the Word of God.
For 15 years I studied carefully burning
the midnight oil. If there was anything I
desired to know it was the difference
between the spirit and the soul. Eventually,
I went through this process of elimination. I
wrote it down like this: With my body I
contact the physical realm. (That goes
without argument.) With my spirit I contact
the spiritual realm. That left only one other
part of me that made contact with any other
realm. I knew then that it had to be with
my soul that I contacted the intellectual
realm. So I wrote: With my soul I contact
the intellectual realm. Here is a Scripture
that helped me:
For if I pray in an unknown tongue,
my spirit prayeth, but my
understanding is unfruitful.
-1 Corinthians
14:14
The Amplified translation reads, "For if I
pray in an unknown tongue, my spirit by
the Holy Spirit within me prays, but my
mind is unproductive . . .."
Our understanding, our natural human
mentality, is a part of our soul.
Notice what Paul said. "My spirit prays,
but my understanding is unfruitful." He
did not say, "When I pray in an unknown
tongue my soul prays." He did not say,
"When I pray in tongues, I pray out of my
intellect, or out of my mind." He said
What is the Difference Between Spirit and
Soul? 19
in effect, "I am not praying out of my soul
when I pray in tongues; I am praying out of
my spirit, my heart, my innermost being."
Do you remember what Jesus said?
In the last day, that great day of the
feast, Jesus stood and cried,
saying, If any man thirst, let him
come unto me, and drink. He that
believeth on me, as the scripture
hath said, OUT OF HIS BELLY
shall flow rivers of living water. ,
,
(BUT THIS SPAKE HE OF THE
SPIRIT, which they that believe f^il t
K
on him should receive: for the Holy
Ghost was not yet/givenK '///, 'Ji- .
because that Jesus was not yet glorified.)
"
<-</c.
- John 7:37-39
As a result of receiving the Holy Spirit,
Jesus said, out of the belly shall flow rivers
of living water. Another translation reads,
"out of the innermost being".
A Full Gospel pastor's daughter was 6
years old when she and some of the
children were off to themselves one night
at a revival. Some of these youngsters
were filled with the Holy Spirit and began
to speak with other tongues. This little
6-year-old ran up to her mother, holding
her stomach, and saying, "Momma,
Momma, that came right out of my belly."
She was scriptural. She was speaking in
tongues from her belly—her spirit, her
innermost being. That's where tongues
come from—the Holy Spirit who resides in
your spirit gives your spirit the utterance
and you speak it out.
Consider these Scriptures together now.
"The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord,
searching all the INWARD PARTS OF
THE BELLY. . . OUT OF HIS BELLY shall
flow rivers of living water. . . ."
All the leadings I have ever gotten have
come out of my spirit—and most have
come while praying in other tongues. You
can understand why. Your spirit is active
when you pray in tongues.
One reason the church world as a whole
has failed so
20 How You Can Be Led By The Spirit
of God
miserably is that it has done so much of just
one kind of praying—praying with the
understanding, mental prayer. It has
endeavored to fight spiritual battles with
mental abilities.
I have learned this through these many,
many years. In every crisis of life I have
learned to look to my spirit inside me. I have
learned to pray in other tongues. While I am
praying in other tongues, there comes up
guidance from inside me. This is because my
spirit is active—my body is not active, my mind
(my soul) is not active—and it is through my
spirit that God is going to guide me.
Sometimes I interpret my praying in
tongues, and through the interpretation I
receive light and guidance (1 Cor. 14:13). But
most of the time, not so. Most of the time, just
while I am praying in tongues, from
somewhere way down inside, I can sense
something rise up in me. It begins to take
shape and form. I cannot tell anybody
mentally how I know it, because my
understanding has nothing to do with it. But
I know on the inside of me what to do.
I follow that. I listen to my spirit. Because
the spirit of man is the candle of the Lord.
The Saving of the Soul
". . . receive with meekness the
engrafted word, which
is able to save your souls." -James
1:21
l h e
le spirit of man is the part of man
that is born again. It is the part of man
that receives Eternal Life, which is the
Nature and Life of God. It is the spirit
of man that becomes a new creature in
Christ Jesus. The soul is not the
innermost being at all. It is not the soul
that is born again. The saving of the
soul is a process.
James 1:21 used to bother me when
I was a denominational preacher
before I was filled with the Holy
Spirit. I didn't know what I know now.
I used spirit and soul interchangeably,
referring to the spirit as the soul, and
the soul as the spirit. I didn't divide
them as the Bible does. But I did have
enough sense to leave this verse alone
until I grew to where I could
understand what it is saying.
The Epistle of James was not written
to sinners. James did not write a letter
to the world; he wrote this letter to the
Church. We know that from James 5
where he says, "Is any sick among
you? let him call for the elders of the
church . . . " In other words, is there any
sick among the Church, let him call for
the elders of the Church. Also
referring back now to the first chapter
of James, let's pick up with verse 18:
Of his own will begat he us with the
word of truth, that we should be a
kind of firstfruits of his creatures.
Wherefore, my beloved
21
22 How You Can Be Led By The
Spirit of God
brethren, let every man be swift to
hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath:
For the wrath of man worketh not the
righteousness of God. Wherefore lay
apart all filthiness and superfluity of
naughtiness, and receive with
meekness the engrafted word, which
is able to save your souls.
-James
1:18-21
James is talking to born-again ones. Of
the Father's own will, he writes, we were
begotten or born with the Word of Truth.
He calls them, "my beloved brethren." So
they were in Christ. Yet he encourages
these born-again, Spirit-filled people to
receive the engrafted Word with meekness,
"which is able to save your souls."
Evidently, their souls were not saved.
You see, a man's spirit, the innermost
man, the real man, receives Eternal Life
and is born again. But his intellect and
emotions—which compose his soul—still
have to be dealt with. They are not
born-again. They are to be renewed.
Paul speaks about the renewing of the
mind writing to the saints at Rome:
And be not conformed to this world:
but be ye transformed by the
renewing of your mind, that ye may
prove what is that good, and
acceptable, and perfect, will of God.
-Romans
12:2
The Psalmist spoke of the restoring of the
soul:
He restoreth my soul . . . .
-Psalm
23:3
The Hebrew word translated restore in
the Old Testament, and the Greek word
translated renew in the New Testament
mean about the same thing. The soul, the
mind, is to be renewed or restored.
My mother left me a chair which she
inherited from her mother. I don't know
exactly how old that chair is, but it is quite
The Saving of the Soul
2
3
old. I can remember, way back there, that
my grandmother had it restored. They put
new upholstery on it. They revamished it.
It was still the same chair; it was just
restored. It was renewed.
It is never written that God restores our
spirits. Our spirits become brand new
creatures in Christ Jesus. Our souls,
however, can be renewed or restored.
How? We have these expressions relative
to the soul: receive with meekness the
engrafted word, which is able to save your
souls . . . be not conformed to this world:
but be ye transformed by the renewing of
your mind, that ye may prove what is that
good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of
God . . . He restoreth my soul.
Man's soul is saved, or restored, when
his mind becomes renewed with the Word
of God. It is the Word of God that saves our
souls, that renews our minds, that restores
our souls.
When our minds get renewed with the
Word of God, then we think in line with
what God's Word says. We are able to
know and prove the permissive and the
perfect will of God—because the Word of
God is the will of God. We don't have so
many questions about the will of God when
we get our souls saved.
The greatest need of the Church today is
minds renewed with the Word of God.
6
Presenting the Body
"I beseech you therefore, brethren,
by the mercies of
God, that ye present your bodies a
living sacrifice,
holy, acceptable unto God, which is
your reasonable
service." -Romans
12:1
JLt is the inward man—not the outward
man—that becomes a new creature in
Christ. We still have the same body we
had before we became a new creature.
What we must learn to do is to let that new
man on the inside of us dominate. With
that new man, we control the flesh and do
something with our bodies.
Let's look again at Second Corinthians
5:17, "Therefore if any man be in Christ, he
is a new creature: old things are passed
away; behold, all things are become new."
One translation reads, "If any man be in
Christ, there is a new self. . . "
Sometimes in churches we hear people
talk about "dying out to self." There is no
such statement in the Bible. We don't need
to die out to self if we have become a new
self. What we need to do is
crucify the flesh. The Bible does talk about
that.
Crucifying the flesh is not something
God does for you. It is something you do
for yourself. _ "I beseech you therefore,
brethren," Paul wrote the Church, "by the
mercies of God, that ye present your bodies
Who presents your bodies?
You do.
25
26 How You Can Be Led By The Spirit
of God
Who is you?
That's the man on the inside who is born
again, and has become a new creature.
You do something with your body. If you do
not do something with it, nothing will ever be
done.
But I keep under my body, and bring
it into subjection: lest that by any
means, when I have preached to
others, I myself should be a
castaway (disapproved).
-1 Corinthians
9:27
Here Paul is talking about the fact that he
does something with his body, "/keep under
my body, /bring it into subjection."
Who is/?
That's the real man, the real Paul, the man
on the inside who has become a new creature
in Christ Jesus and is filled with the Holy
Spirit. '7 do something with my body. / keep
it under. / bring it into subjection."
What did he bring his body into subjection
to?
To the inward man. Instead of letting the
body dominate the inward man, Paul saw to it
that the inward man dominated the outward
man.
Now notice this. Here is this great apostle,
this holy man of God, this man who wrote half
the New Testament, a man who is a spiritual
giant—yet evidently his body wanted to do
things that were wrong. If it hadn't, he would
not have had to keep it under. He would not
have had to bring it into subjection.
Just because your body wants to do wrong,
doesn't mean you are not saved—or, that you
are not filled with the Holy Spirit. (If that were
the case, Paul was not saved.) You will have
to contend with the body, the flesh, as long as
you are here.
"Brother Hagin, I want you to pray for me,"
the man said.
"What for?" I asked. I like to know what I
am to pray for.
A look of seriousness, even tears, came to
his eyes, "I want
Presenting the Body
2
7
you to pray that I will never have any
more trouble with the devil."
I said, "Do you want me to pray you will
die?"
"No, no, I don't want to die."
I said, "The only way you won't have any
more trouble with the devil is to get out of
here and go on to Heaven."
You will have problems with the devil as
long as you are in this life. You will have
problems with the flesh as long as you are
in the flesh. But, blessed be God, you have
the means, the ability, and the authority
given to you through the Word of God to
deal with the devil and to deal with the
flesh.
Paul did not let his body dominate him.
The man on the inside—that was
born-again, and filled with the Holy
Spirit— dominated the outward man.
You can do it. What I want you to see is
this—you are the one who must do it. Paul
did not say God would do it for you. He did
not say the Holy Spirit would do it for you.
He said, "You present your bodies." He said,
"You be not conformed to this world." He
said, "You be transformed by the renewing
of your mind."You present your body. You
do it. You get your mind renewed with the
Word of God. You do it.
The Life and Nature of God is inside
your spirit. Let that man on the inside be
the dominate one. Listen to him. It is the
spirit of man that is the candle of the Lord.
It is through your spirit that God will guide
you.
Number One: The Inward
Witness
"The Spirit (Himself)
beareth witness with our
spirit. . . ." —Romans
8:16
Y.
. ou will find that being led by an
inward witness is the number one, or
the primary way, that God leads all of
His children.
Let me go back—I said I would in the
preface of this book—to what Jesus said
to me in February of 1959 in El Paso,
Texas. It was 6:30 in the afternoon. I
was sitting up in bed studying. My eyes
were wide open. (There are three types
of visions. The highest type is an open
vision. In an open vision one's physical
senses are not suspended. His physical
eyes are not closed. He possesses all
his physical capabilities, yet sees into
the realm of the spirit.)
I heard footsteps. The door to my
room was ajar 12 to 14 inches. So I
looked to see who was coming into my
room. I expected some literal physical
person. But as I looked to see who it
was, I saw Jesus. It seemed as if the hair
on my neck and head stood straight up
on end. Chill bumps popped out all
over my body.
I saw Him. He had on a white robe.
He wore roman sandals. (Jesus has
appeared to me eight times. Every time
except this time His feet were bare.
This time He had on sandals; that's
29
30 How You Can Be Led By The
Spirit of God
what I had heard.) He seemed to be about 5
feet 11 inches tall. He looked to weigh
about 180 pounds.
He came through the door and pushed it
back almost shut. He walked around the
foot of my bed. I followed Him with my
eyes—almost spellbound. He took hold of
a straight chair and pushed it up close to my
bed. Then He sat down in it, folded His
hands, and began His conversation by
saying, "I said to you night before last in
the automobile by my Spirit.. . ."
The automobile was full. My wife and I
and others were driving along within two
blocks from where I was as Jesus sat by my
bedside. I heard the Spirit of God speak to
me. I thought everyone in the car heard it. I
said, "Did you all hear that?" They said,
"No, we didn't hear anything."
In the Old Testament the prophets
would say, "And the Word of the Lord
came unto me saying. . . ." Did you ever
wonder how it came? It could not have been
literally audible. If it had been audible
everyone present would have heard it—he
would not have had to tell them what the
Spirit said. The Word of the Lord came to
the prophet's spirit from the Spirit of God. It
is so real that it seems audible at the time,
for it was so real to me I thought everyone
with me in the car had heard it too.
Jesus said, as He sat at my bedside, "I
spoke to you night before last in the
automobile and told you certain things. I
told you, by my Spirit, that I would talk to
you further later. So now I have come to
talk to you about this . . . ."
It was concerning the ministry of the
prophet. He sat there in that chair and talked
to me for an hour and a half. And I talked
to Him. I asked questions in reference to
what He was saying. He answered them. I
will not go into all He said about the
prophet's ministry; that is another message.
But I will get into the edge of it.
He said to me, "The prophet of the New
Testament is very similar to the prophet of
the Old Testament in that the prophet of
the Old Testament was called a 'seer'
because he saw and
Number One: The Inward Witness
3
1
knew things supernaturally. The prophet of
the New Testament will also see and know
things supernaturally. But the prophet of the
New Testament does not have the same
status as the prophet of the Old, in that I did
not set prophets in the Church to guide the
Church. One under the New Testament
need not seek guidance through prophets.
He might receive guidance through
prophets, but he should not seek it. It is
unscriptural to do so. The ministry of the
New Testament prophet in this area is only
to confirm what people already have in
their own spirits.
"Under the Old Covenant, only the
priest, the prophet, and the king were
anointed by the Holy Spirit to stand in
those offices. What you would call the laity
did not have the Spirit of God upon them or
in them. Therefore, under the Old
Covenant, they would seek guidance
through the prophet because he had the
Spirit."
Under the New Testament, thanks be to
God, we not only have the Spirit of God
upon us—we have Him in us!
Jesus said to me, "Under the New
Covenant, it does not say, ■£(_.<. As many
as are led by prophets, they are the sons of God.'
The
-- New Testament says> 'As many as are led
by the Spirit of God,
they are the sons of God.'"
Then He said, "The number one way, the
primary way, that I lead all of my children
is by the inward witness. I am going to
show you how that works so you won't
make the mistakes you have made in the
past."
He explained to me that to stand in the
office of the prophet, one is first of all a
minister of the Gospel separated and called
to the ministry with the calling of God upon
his life. Secondly, he has at least two of the
revelation gifts—the word of wisdom, the
word of knowledge, the discerning of
spirits—plus the gift of prophecy,
operating in his ministry.
Then He called my attention to
something that had been happening the
previous three days. For the past three days
I had sat down to write a letter to a pastor
confirming a date to hold a
32 How You Can Be Led By The Spirit
of God
meeting for him. Somehow, the first day, I
got about half a page written, then I tore it
up and threw it into the wastebasket. The
next day I did the same thing. The third
day I did the same thing. Now the Lord is
here.
He said, "You see me sitting here
talking to you. This is a manifestation of
the Spirit called discerning of spirits. (Dis-
cerning of spirits is seeing into the spirit
realm.) This is the prophet's ministry in
operation. You are seeing into the realm of
the spirit. You see me. You hear me
talking. I am bringing you through the
vision a word of knowledge, and also a
word of wisdom. I am telling you not to go
to that church. The pastor would not accept
the way you would minister when you got
there. But I am never going to lead you
this way again. (He never has. That has
been 20 years ago.) From now on, I'm going
to lead you by the inward witness. You had
the inward witness all the time. You had a
check in your spirit. That's the reason you
tore up the letter three times. You had a
something on the inside, a check, a red
light, a stop signal. It wasn't even a voice
that said, 'Don't go.' It was just an inward
intuition."
Then He reminded me of another
invitation. I had preached a convention for
one of the Full Gospel denominations the
previous year. Nearly every pastor there
asked if I would come and hold a meeting. I
had hundreds of calls, I suppose.
One fellow came up to me and said,
"Brother Hagin, do you ever go to small
churches?"
I said, "I go anywhere the Lord says to
go."
"Well, we only run 70 to 90 in Sunday
School. But if God ever speaks to you, we
want you to come."
I dismissed that along with hundreds of
others. Several months later, however,
while praying in the church one day about
my services that night, that conversation
came back to me. Then every day it
continued to come back to me. Finally,
after about 30 or 40 days, I said, "Lord, do
You want me to go to that little church for a
meeting?"
Number One: The Inward Witness
3
3
The more I would pray about it, the more
I would think about it, as we say, the better I
would feel on the inside of me. It wasn't a
physical feeling, but one in my spirit.
Sitting by my bedside, Jesus referred to
this, "The more you thought about it, the
better you felt about it. You had a
velvety-like feeling in your spirit. That's
the green light. That's the go-ahead signal.
That's the witness of the Spirit to go. Now
you see me sitting here, you hear me talking
to you, and I am telling you to go to that
church. But I am never going to lead you to
go anywhere again like this. (He never
has.) From now on, I am going to lead you
just like I do every other Christian—by the
inward witness."
Then the Lord said this to me, which is
not just for my benefit, but for yours, "If
you will learn to follow that inward witness
I will make you rich. I will guide you in all
the affairs of life, financial as well as
spiritual. (Some think He's only interested
in their spiritual atmosphere, and nothing
else. But He's interested in everything we
are interested in.) I am not opposed to my
children being rich. I am opposed to their
being covetous." "
I have followed that inward witness and
He has done just what He said He would.
He has made me rich.
Somebody asked, "Are you a
millionaire?"
I didn't say that. They failed to realize
what the word rich means. It means a full
supply. It means abundant provision. I
have more than a full supply. I have more
than an abundant provision. It is because I
learned to follow the leading of the Spirit
by the inward witness.
What He did for me, He will do for you.
It won't come overnight, or by next
Saturday night. But as you learn to
develop your spirit and follow that inward
witness, He will guide you in every area of
your life.
I knew a man down in Texas. At the age
of 12 he had never had on a pair of shoes.
He had only a 5th grade education. But
34 How You Can Be Led By The
Spirit of God
way back when money was money, he was
a millionaire.
Two different people, one from
California, the other from Minnesota, who
had been frequent house guests in his
home, told me this man told each of them
the same thing.
He said to them both, "In all these years
and investments (that's how he made his
money), I have never lost a dime."
That beats my record. How about yours?
"I have never invested in anything but
what made it," he told each of them on
different occasions. Then he told them how
he did it.
"I always do this. When someone comes
along with an idea wanting me to invest in
something, my first reaction is mental.
Now I know when Jesus said, 'When you
pray, enter into your closet,' that He didn't
necessarily mean you have to get into a
closet to pray. I know He meant for us to
shut things out. But I have a large closet
off my bedroom which I go into and pray
about it. I wait long enough until I hear
what my spirit says. Sometimes I wait
three days. Now I don't mean that I stay in
there 24 hours a day. I might come out
and eat one meal. Usually I miss a few. I
come out and sleep a little bit. But the
majority of the time I am waiting, just by
myself, until I know inside by an inward
witness.
"Sometimes my head says, 'Boy, you
would be a fool to put your money in that.
You'll lose your shirt.' But my heart says,
'Go ahead and invest in it.' So I do. And in
all these years, I have never lost a dime.
"Then again, somebody comes along with
a deal and my head says, 'Boy, you had
better get in there.' But I don't pay any
attention to my head. I get into that closet
and wait. Sometimes all night long I wait.
I'll pray and read my Bible, but a lot of the
time I just wait. I just get quiet until I can
hear inside what my heart says. When my
heart says, 'No, don't do it,' and my head
says, 'Yes, you'd better get in on it,' I don't
get into it."
What had he done? He had learned to
follow the inward
Number One: The Inward Witness
3
5
witness and God had guided him in his
business until in the late 30's and the early
40's he was already worth two million.
That doesn't sound so big now, but it was
big then.
Do you think God loved him more than
He loves you? No, he took time to listen to
God. He took steps and means and
measures to wait.
A group of we ministers were talking
personally, conversing with one another.
Someone asked a certain individual, I
won't mention his name, but he is a very
successful minister, "Now we know that
God called you and that the anointing of
God's Spirit is upon you. But from your
standpoint, is there any one thing you do
that you would say contributed more to your
success than any other one thing?"
That man said, "I always follow my
deepest premonitions."
What was he saying? He was simply
saying, "I always listen to my spirit. I do
what my spirit tells me to do. I follow that
inward witness."
The inward witness is just as
supernatural as guidance through visions
and so on; it is just not as spectacular.
Many people are looking for the
spectacular and missing the supernatural
that is right there all the time.
8
Know-So Salvation
"He that believeth on the Son of God
hath the witness
in himself: . . . ." -1 John
5:10
i or as many as are led by the Spirit of God,
they are the sons of God" (Rom. 8:14). The
sons of God can expect to be led by the
Spirit of God. Hallelujah! They are not led
by somebody else telling them what to do.
The Holy Spirit is going to lead us. We
have the Scripture that says so.
How does He lead? The 16th verse gives
us a clue. "The Spirit (Himself) beareth
witness with our spirit, that we are the
children of God" (Rom. 8:16).
If in this most important aspect of life,
the most important thing that can happen to
you—becoming a child of God—if the way
He lets you know that you are a child of God
is by His Spirit bearing witness with your
spirit, then you can understand that the
first and foremost way He will lead you is
by the inward witness.
You do not know that you are a child of
God because somebody prophesied you are.
You wouldn't accept that. You do not know
that you are a child of God because
somebody said, "I feel like you are." You
wouldn't accept that. You are not a child of
God because you had a vision. You might,
or you might not have had a vision. But
that does not make you a child of God.
That is not what the Bible says. It is not the
way you know that you are a child of God.
37
38 How You Can Be Led By The
Spirit of God
How does the Bible say we know we are
children of God? His Spirit, God's Spirit,
bears witness with our spirits.
Sometimes you can't really explain how
you know. But you just know, right down
on the inside of you. You know it! You
know it by the inward witness.
I was born again as a teenager on the bed
of sickness April 22, 1933. Since that day
the thought has never occurred to me that I
might not be saved. Yet even as a young
Christian I ran into people who said,
"You're not saved because you don't belong
to our church." Or those who would argue,
"You're not saved because you haven't
been baptized our way." And everything
else in the world.
But none of it disturbed me. I laughed at
it. Because I had the witness! And I had the
love!
We know that we have passed from
death unto life, because we love . . . .
-Uohn3:1
4
9
Fleeced!
"A new heart also will I give you,
and a new spirit will I put within
you: and I will take away the stony
heart out of your flesh, and I will
give you an heart of flesh. And I will
put my spirit within you
-Ezekiel
36:26,27
An 1941 I didn't know as much as I know
now. Please don't misunderstand me; I
don't know as much now as I am going to
know. I would hate to think I know all I am
ever going to know in this life about God
and about the Bible. No, we don't know
everything, but praise God for what we do
know.
My wife and I were pastors of a church
in the black land of North Central Texas.
Another church down in the oil field of
East Texas wanted me to come try out as
pastor. So I drove down and preached one
Sunday. The church asked if they could
vote on me for pastor, and I said yes.
Traveling back home after the service, I put
out a fleece.
Now I was born and raised Southern
Baptist. I started preaching as a Southern
Baptist. In 1937 I was baptized in the Holy
Spirit as a Baptist preacher. In 1939 I
accepted the pastorate of a little Full Gospel
Church. It was in March of 1941 that this
church in East Texas wanted to consider me
as pastor. I had been around Full Gospel
people long enough now that some of their
misconceptions had rubbed off on me.
Don't misunderstand me; a lot of good
things rubbed off on me too. But
39
40 How You Can Be Led By The Spirit
of God
this one was bad. I kept hearing them talk
about putting out fleeces. So I put out a
fleece.
I really knew better. But it would save me
a lot of the trouble of praying, and getting
alone and waiting on God, and maybe
some fasting, just to put out a fleece.
In putting out a fleece one prays
something like this, "Lord, if you want me
to do this—You do that." Or, "God, if you
want me to do this, then have that happen."
Or, "Lord, shut that door, and open this
door."
Some of those doors the devil might shut,
and the devil might open. They are on his
territory. The Bible calls him the god of
this world (2 Cor. 4:4). That would be like
praying, "Lord, if you want me to go to
Kansas City next week, You open Brother
Hagin's front door." I might open it myself.
I live there. Satan can move in the sense
realm.
God has a better way of leading His
children than a hit-and-miss method. The
New Testament does not say, "As many as
are led by fleeces, they are the children of
God."
"Yes," someone might say, "but Gideon
put out a fleece back in the Old
Testament."
Why go back under the old covenant?
We have something better. The old
covenant is for spiritually dead people. I am
not spiritually dead. I am alive! I have the
Spirit of God in me.
Remember Gideon was not a prophet, a
priest, or a king. Only those, under the old
covenant, were anointed by the Spirit of
God. The Spirit of God was not personally
present with the rest of the people.
That's why every male had to present
himself at the temple in Jerusalem once a
year. The Shechinah Glory, the Presence of
God, was kept shut up in the Holy of Holies.
But when Jesus died on Calvary, the curtain
that curtained off the Holy of Holies rent
in twain from top to bottom—and God
moved out. He has never dwelled in
earth-made houses since. He dwells in us!
It is dangerous for New Testament,
Spirit-filled Christians
Fleeced!
4
1
to put out fleeces. I know that from the
Word. And I know it from experience.
Back there in 19411 said, as I drove
along, "Lord, I am going to put out a fleece.
I am just going to turn it over to You. (I
didn't realize that I didn't turn it over to the
Lord.) If they elect me 100 percent, I am
going to accept that as being the will of
God, and I am going to accept that church."
I got every vote. That was my fleece.
They elected me 100 percent. They missed
God. I missed God. They got fleeced. I got
fleeced. I got out of the perfect will of
God—and God just let me doit.
We moved into the parsonage. Many
things were more comfortable than what
we had before from the natural
standpoint. We had more money. We
lived in a better parsonage. We drove a
better automobile.
But I would study and pray and get a
message—and be just all on fire. Then the
minute I stepped inside the church door, it
was as though somebody poured a bucket of
cold water on me. I lost it all. In 14 months
I didn't preach a decent sermon. No
inspiration.
My wife was reluctant to say anything.
She finally did say, "Honey, you've got to
where you can make a pretty good talk."
That was all I was doing, making talks. I
wasn't preaching. When my agreed upon
time was up, I left. I didn't wait for some
signal to leave; I left.
Later on in pastoring, I always wanted to
go back there for a meeting because I
wanted those people to know I could
preach. They had never heard me. So I
went back and held a revival. Folks'
mouths fell open, "We didn't know you
could preach like that."
I said, "Oh, yes, I preached like that
before I came here to pastor. I preached
like that after I left here."
"Well, you didn't preach like that here."
I said, "No, we were all out of the will of
God. I was here out of
42 How You Can Be Led By The Spirit
of God
the will of God. You elected me out of the
will of God."
I learned about that fleece business. One
time ought to cure a
fellow. But some folks, even though none
of them have ever
worked, still put out fleeces.
I never did miss it anymore in going to
any church as pastor.
And I didn't put out fleeces. I prayed and
waited on God. I talked
to God long enough until I knew right on
the inside what to do.
10
Following the Witness
"For thou wilt light my candle: the
Lord my God will
enlighten my darkness." -Psalm
18:28
We
e left that church. We were asked by
leaders of a denomination to take another
church to fill in temporarily, so we did.
While I would be in my study praying, I
would get a burden to go back to the church
I'd left as a result of the fleece. I hadn't
finished what God wanted me to do there.
Usually this happened when I was
praying about my sermon and the Sunday
services in other tongues—and remember,
when I pray in tongues my spirit prays, and
the spirit of man is the candle of the Lord. I
would get such a burden for the church I had
left more than two years before, I would
jump up and run out of the room to get away
from it.
Once I came to myself out in the street
beside the church wondering, "How did I
get out here?" To get out there I'd had to run
out of the church study, across the
auditorium, and out the side door. But I
didn't remember doing that. I was under
such a burden for that church, and I was
trying to get away from it. I didn't want to
go back there to pastor.
Finally, after about 30 days of that, I
said, "Lord, are You talking to me about
going back there? Are You trying to give
43
44 How You Can Be Led By The Spirit
of God
some guidance?" Then I said, "Talk to my
wife. She can listen, too."
One morning, while we washed dishes, I
said to my wife, "Honey, if the Lord says
anything to you, let me know." I didn't tell
her anything more.
Then I waited 30 days. You don't have to
get into a big hurry about some things. The
Bible says, " ... he that believeth shall not
make haste" (Is. 28:16). Faith doesn't get
in a hurry. The devil will try to push you.
He will say, "Hurry up. Hurry up. Hurry,
hurry, hurry." He will try to move you out
of faith, move you into doubt, move you
into unbelief, and get you away from the
leading of God.
Thirty days later, as I washed the dishes
and she dried, I said, "Has the Lord been
talking to you?"
"If He has, I don't know it."
I got a little more pointed to bring her
out. I said, "Has the Lord said anything to
you about going back to . . . .?" I called the
name of the city where the church was.
"Oh," she said, "I thought that was just
me."
"Well," I said, "let's analyze what you
mean when you say me."
If you mean the flesh, then it wouldn't be
right. But if it is the real me, the real you,
the man on the inside, remember that the
spirit is the candle of the Lord. Then it is
not just you, it is the Lord lighting the
candle.
"I want to ask you a question," I said to
her, "so we can ascertain just what it is.
From the physical, from the mental, just
naturally speaking, do you want to go back
there?"
"Oh, no!"
"It couldn't be you then, could it? (It
would have been better to say, it couldn't
have been the flesh, the natural man, the
outward man.) You're not going to be
thinking about doing something you don't
want to do."
I saw she had the inward witness just as I
did. Sometimes the
Following the Witness
4
5
inward witness is there and people don't
recognize it.
"I am convinced," I told her, "that God is
leading us that way. It will have to be God
to open it up and get us back there. Let's
just let Him do it."
He did. Within a few months, without my
doing anything to work it out, I was
invited to preach a week in that church.
Afterwards the board asked if I would be
interested in coming back to pastor.
I didn't tell them I had something from
God. I just said, "I might be."
They said, "We have all been talking and
the church wants you back."
"Well," I said, "they would have to vote
on me. So I'll tell you what I'll do—just go
ahead and vote, and I will tell you
afterwards."
From the natural standpoint my wife and
I still did not want to go back. Though we
loved the people, we did not want to live in
that town. We did not want to live in that
house. In my heart I wanted to obey God,
but everything about my flesh recoiled. My
natural man, my outward man, and in my
own natural human thinking and mind, I
did not want to go.
So really, when I kept praying and
fasting while the church board was making
all the proper announcements and ad-
vertising the election, I was saying to the
Lord that I didn't want to trust that inward
witness I knew both my wife and I had.
I was over into the third day of a fast. I
wanted the Lord to move in some
supernatural way—I wanted some kind of a
word, tongues and interpretation, a
prophecy, or God just to write up in the
sky, "GO TO THAT PLACE." I was on my
knees bawling and squawling and
begging—because I didn't know any better.
God also leads by an inward voice as
well as by an inward witness. That inward
voice said, "Get up from there and quit
acting like that."
I got up. Then I said, "Lord, if You could
just give me some
46 How You Can Be Led By The Spirit
of God
supernatural sign, I would feel better about
this."
He said, "You have all I am going to give
you. You don't need any supernatural sign.
You don't need any supernatural writing
in the sky. You don't need any tongues
and interpretation. You don't need any
prophecy. You know on the inside of you
what to do. Now do it!"
I said, "Okay, I will."
Many times we ignore the inward
witness. We want something out in the
sense realm. We seek the sensational and
miss the supernatural.
Let's learn that God leads all of His
children, primarily, by an inward witness.
11
Number Two: The Inward
Voice
"I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my
conscience also bearing me witness in
the Holy Ghost," —Romans 9:1
number one way the Spirit guides is
through the inward witness. Number two is
by the inward voice.
The inward man, who is a spirit man, has
a voice—just as the outward man has a
voice. We call this voice conscience. We
call this voice the still small voice.
Your spirit has a voice. Your spirit will
speak to you.
In September 1966 we moved to Tulsa,
Oklahoma from Garland, Texas, a suburb of
Dallas. We had lived there 17 years. The
move came about like this. My wife and I
were in Tulsa on business. The ministry
was growing and I had already figured out
in my head what I would do with my office
and home in Texas. But the friend with
whom we were staying in Tulsa said,
"Brother Hagin, you ought to move to
Tulsa. Brother T. L. Osborn's old office
building is for sale. His business manager
asked me to sell it for them." Then he
quoted their price. It was extremely low.
But I was not interested. Finally, he said,
"Let's go look at it." I went along just to
humor him.
The minute I stood inside that building a
buzzer went off inside me. (Sometimes
that inward witness is like an inward
buzzer.) I knew as well as I knew my name,
this is it\ But I didn't
47
48 How You Can Be Led By The
Spirit of God
want to listen to it; I wanted to stay in
Garland.
(That's why we don't hear a lot of times.
We don't want to hear. We say we do, but
we don't.)
Back at our friend's home my wife asked
me about it.
"Oh, no. I've already got it all figured
out. We'll stay where we are. We'll turn our
whole home into an office. And we'll just
stay in Garland."
We went to bed. But I couldn't sleep.
Ordinarily, I have no trouble sleeping.
The Bible says, ". . . he giveth his beloved
sleep" (Ps. 127:2). I am His beloved. So are
you. "He hath made us accepted in the
beloved" (Eph. 1:6). So I always claim the
promise of God and say, "Lord, I'm Your
beloved. So I'll take it. I thank You for it."
And I always go to sleep.
But this time, I couldn't. My conscience
was hurting. My conscience is the voice of
my spirit. My spirit knows I didn't listen to
it.
Lying there quietly in the nighttime, I
said, "Lord, if you want me to move to
Tulsa, I will. In the natural, I don't want to
move up here, but I wouldn't want to stand
in Your way."
Then on the inside of me I heard the still
small voice.
Now I'm not talking about the Spirit of
God speaking. When the Holy Spirit
speaks it is more authoritative. The still
small voice is the voice of our own spirit
speaking. But our own spirit picks it up
from the Holy Spirit who is in us.
That still small voice, that inward voice,
not authoritative, just something on the
inside of me said, "I am going to give you
that building."
I laughed. I know there is a lot of
unbelief about this, but I said, "Okay.
When you do, I'll believe it."
That inward voice said, "You watch me."
Without going into all the detail, it would
surprise you how God gave us that
building.
12
Conscience: Voice of the Human
Spirit
"AndPaul, earnestly beholding the
council, said, Men
and brethren, I have lived in all good
conscience before
God until this day." -Acts
23:1
At is interesting to go through the Epistles
Paul wrote to the Church and see what he
said about his conscience. You will notice
that he always obeyed it.
Is your conscience a safe guide?
Yes—if your spirit has become a new
man in Christ. Because your conscience is
the voice of your spirit.
Therefore if any man be in Christ, he
is a new creature: old things are
passed away; behold, all things are
become new.
-2 Corinthians
5:17
These things take place in man's spirit, in
the inward man. He is first a new
creature—a brand new man in Christ.
Secondly, old things have passed
away—the nature of the devil in his spirit is
gone. Thirdly, A-L-L things have become
new—in his spirit, not in his body and
mind—now he has the Nature of God in
his spirit.
Therefore, if your spirit is a new man
with the Life and Nature of God in it, it is a
safe guide.
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50 How You Can Be Led By The Spirit
of God
A person who has not been born again
could not follow the voice of his spirit. His
spirit is unregenerate. His conscience
would permit him to do anything.
When you have the Life and Nature of
God in you, your conscience will not
permit you to do just anything. And if you
are born again, you have the Life of God.
For God so loved the world, that he
gave his only begotten Son, that
whosoever believeth in him should
not perish, but have
EVERLASTING LIFE.
-John
3:16
For the wages of sin is death; but the
gift of God is ETERNAL LIFE
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
-Romans
6:23
Somebody said, "That means we are
going to live forever up in Heaven."
No, it does not. Consider this Scripture:
These things have I written unto you
that believe on the name of the Son
of God; that ye may know that YE
HAVE ETERNAL LIFE . . . .
-1 John
5:13
Have is present tense. We have Eternal
Life now. If you are a born-again Christian,
you have the Life of God in your spirit.
You have the Nature of God in your spirit.
Oh! If people would learn to follow their
spirits! If they would learn to take
advantage of the Life that is in them!
I joined the church and was baptized
early in life—but that didn't make me a
Christian. My spirit was still unregenerate
when I became totally bedfast from a heart
condition at the age of 15.1 was truly born
again during the 16 months I was bedfast.
Then in August of 1934, as a Baptist boy
reading Grandma's Methodist Bible, I was
healed.
Conscience: Voice of the Human
Spirit
5
1
I went back to high school. I had missed
one school year. Before I was born again, I
just barely got by in some classes. Then, if
you made a "D" it was failing. And if you
failed one subject you stayed in that grade
and took the whole thing over again. Two
teachers in two subjects said to me, "We
gave you two points or you would have had
a 'D'."
But after I was born again, I never
made anything but a straight "A" report
card. And I never took one book home to
study.
Now I didn't know a thing about the
baptism of the Holy Spirit then, but do you
know what I did know? I knew I had the
Life of God in me!
As I walked down the street to school
every morning —unconsciously, I was
being led by the Spirit; my heart told me to
do it, and I listened to my heart instead of
my head—I had a conversation with the
Lord.
I said, "Now, Lord, I read in the Old
Testament where Daniel and the three
Hebrew children were in school in
Babylon and You gave them favor with the
dean of the school (Dan. 1:9). God, give me
favor with every teacher. Thank You for
it; I have it now. Then when their three
years of training were over, they were ten
times smarter than the rest (w. 18-20).
Lord, I have Your Life in me. John 1:4
says, 'In him was life; and the life was the
light of men.' Light stands for
development. Impart to me knowledge and
skill in all learning and wisdom that I may
be ten times better . . . ."
Every day as I walked to school I would
confess, "In Him was Life and the Life was
the light of men. That Life is in me. The
Life of God is in me. That Life is the light,
it is the development of me. It is developing
my spirit. It is developing my mentality. I
have God in me. I have God's wisdom in me.
I have God's Life in me. That Life of God in
my spirit dominates me. I purpose in my
heart to walk in the light of Life."
Now I do not mean that I just skipped
by. In study hall
52 How You Can Be Led By The Spirit
of God
periods at school I studied. I listened
intently in class to everything that was
said. But by receiving Eternal Life into my
spirit, and getting my mind renewed with
the Word, my mentality was increased
from 30 to 60 percent.
The Life of God will do that for anybody.
The most amazing miracle I have seen
of Eternal Life affecting mentality was in a
girl I will call Mary. Her mentality was
increased at least 90 percent.
She started to school at seven and went
seven years without getting out of the first
grade. In those seven years she never
learned to write her name. Finally, they
asked her parents to take her out of school.
As an 18-year-old, in the church I
pastored, I saw her behave like a 2-year-old.
She would get down and crawl around on
the floor like a baby. If she happened not
to be sitting with her mother, she would
slide under the pews, or lift up her skirt and
step over them, to get to where her mother
was. Her clothes were always a sight. Her
hair was never combed.
Then one night, during an evangelistic
revival meeting, Mary came to the altar.
There she received Eternal Life—the
Nature of God. A drastic change occurred
instantly. The very next night she sat in the
service and behaved like any 18-year-old
young lady. She had fixed her hair and
dressed up. Her mentality seemed to have
increased overnight.
Years later I was back in the city to help
with a funeral. "What ever happened to
Mary?" I asked the church secretary. She
led me out on the front porch.
"See all those new houses going up out
there."
I said, "Yes."
"That's an addition to the city. Mary is
building that. She's a widow now. She
handles all her own money. She is her own
financier. She has three lovely children.
They are on the front pew every Sunday.
They are the best-dressed, best-mannered
children in church. As church secretary I
can tell you that
Conscience: Voice of the Human
Spirit
5
3
Mary's tithes and offerings are here every
Sunday."
The Life of God came into her!
I am convinced we have never learned
what we have received. Most of us have
thought that the Lord just forgave us,
saying, "We're the same old creature we
always were. We'll try to hold out faithful
till the end. If we get enough people to pray
for us, maybe we can make it."
No, thank God, the Life of God is
imparted unto our spirits! The Nature of
God is in our spirits. The Holy Spirit is
living and abiding in our spirits.
13
Two Experiences
"Then Philip went down to the city
of Samaria, and
preached Christ unto them . . . when
they believed
Philip preaching the things
concerning the kingdom
of God, and the name of Jesus
Christ, they were
baptized, both men and women . . .
Now when the
apostles which were at Jerusalem
heard that Samaria
had received the word of God, they
sent unto them
Peter and John: Who, when they
were come down,
prayed for them, that they might
receive the Holy
Ghost: (For as yet he was fallen
upon none of them:
only they were baptized in the name
of the Lord Jesus.)
Then laid they their hands on them,
and they received
the Holy Ghost." -Acts
8:5,12,14-17
' nder the New Covenant every child of
God has the Spirit of God. If you are born
again, the Spirit of God is in your spirit.
We do need to differentiate between
being bom of the Spirit and being filled
with the Spirit. The born-again Christian
can be filled with the Spirit that he already
has in him. And when he is filled with that
Spirit, there will be an overflowing. He
will speak with other tongues as the Spirit
gives him utterance (Acts 2:4).
Bible scholars know that water is a type
of the Spirit of God. Jesus Himself used
water as a type of the Spirit. He used it as a
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56 How You Can Be Led By The Spirit
of God
type of the new birth when talking to the
woman at the well of Samaria:
Jesus answered and said unto her, If
thou knewest the gift of God, and
who it is that saith to thee, Give me
to drink; thou wouldest have asked
of him, and he would have given thee
living water. The woman saith unto
him, Sir, thou hast nothing to draw
with, and the well is deep: from
whence then hast thou that living
water? . . . Jesus answered and said
unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this
water shall thirst again: But
whosoever drinketh of the water
that I shall give him shall never
thirst; but the water that I shall give
him shall be in him a well of water
springing up into everlasting life.
-John
4:10,11,13,14
He also used water as a type of the Spirit
in the infilling of the Holy Spirit:
In the last day, that great day of the
feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying,
If any man thirst, let him come unto
me, and drink. He that believeth on
me, as the scripture hath said, out of
his belly shall flow rivers of living
water. (But this spake he of the
Spirit, which they that believe on
him should receive: for the Holy
Ghost was not yet given; because
that Jesus was not yet glorified.)
-John
7:37-39
These are two different experiences. The
new birth is a well of water in you,
springing up into everlasting life. The
infilling of the Holy Spirit is rivers—not
just one river. The water in the well is for
one purpose. The water in the rivers is for
another. The water in the well is for your
own benefit. It blesses you. The rivers
flowing out of you bless somebody else.
Some people say, "If you are born of the
Spirit, you have the Spirit, and that's all
there is." But no, just because you have had
one drink of water is no sign you're full of
water. There is the experience subsequent
to the new birth of being filled with the
Spirit—and as a result, out of the belly
(the spirit) rivers of
Two Experiences
5
7
living water can flow.
Others say that people who are not filled
with the Spirit and speaking with other
tongues do not have the Holy Spirit. That is
not true. If I drink half a glass of water, I
may not be full, but at least I have water in
me. If one is born of the Spirit of God, he has
the Spirit of God abiding in him.
14
God Inside
" . . . for ye are the temple of the
living God; as God hath said, I will
dwell in them, and walk in them; and
I will be their God, and they shall be
my people."
-2 Corinthians
6:16
Af you are born again, the Holy Spirit is
living and abiding in your spirit.
He's living and abiding where? In your
head? No. In your body? In a sense, yes, but
not exactly the way we think. The only
reason your body becomes the temple of
the Holy Spirit is because your body is the
temple of your own spirit. He abides in your
spirit. And He communicates with you
through your spirit.
He does not communicate directly with
your mind—He is not in your mind. He is
in your spirit—He communicates with you
through your spirit. Of course, your spirit
does reach and influence your mentality.
Even as a newborn babe in Christ, still
bedfast, I would know things by an inward
witness. I knew nothing about being filled
with the Holy Ghost and speaking with
other tongues—but I was born of the Spirit.
I had the witness of the Spirit right on the
inside of me that I was a child of God.
I had been bedfast about four months
when my mother came to my bed one day
and said, "Son, I hate to bother you, but
something is wrong with Dub."
Dub is my oldest brother. He was 17 at
the time and he was
5
9
60 How You Can Be Led By The Spirit
of God
gone. We didn't know exactly where he was.
She sensed something in her spirit. She
thought maybe he had gotten into trouble
and was in jail. She said, "I've been
praying for him for three days, but I need
some help."
I said, "Momma, I thought you already
had enough problems with me bedfast. I've
been knowing that myself for several days.
He's not in jail, though. It's not that kind of
trouble. His physical life is in danger. But
I've already prayed, and he will make it.
His life will be spared. I've already got the
answer."
I didn't know how to get the answer on
healing right then—it was a year later
before I was healed. But I knew some
things, praise God, and God will meet you
as far as your faith goes.
Three days later, Dub came home in the
nighttime. You see, it was 1933 and there
was no work. Men were out on the streets
with no jobs in those great depression days.
Dub had gone down to the Rio Grande
Valley to look for work. He didn't find any.
So he decided to hop a freight train—lots of
people were riding the rails in those
days—from the back side of the Valley
right on through to McKinney.
About 50 miles south of Dallas a railway
detective knocked him in the head and
threw him off that train going 50 or 60 miles
an hour. He went sailing down the track.
They burned coal in those days and they
would put the cinders along the track. He
hit those cinders and went scooting on his
back. It's a wonder it hadn't broken his
back. It would have if we hadn't known
about it by an inward witness and prayed.
He lay out in the ditch, then came to after
a while. His shirt was completely torn off,
and the seat of his britches was torn out. So
he could only move at nighttime. In the
daytime he hid out in the trees in the
field—it was the time of year he could
find fruit—and in the nighttime he walked
up the rail toward McKinney. It was night
when he got home. Momma put him to bed
and he was all right in a few days.
Momma and I were not Spirit-filled
Christians—but we
God Inside
6
1
were Christians. And we had a witness in
our spirits that something was wrong—an
inward intuition. This is something every
Christian ought to have. It is something
every Christian should develop. We should
develop our spirits.
A Full Gospel minister friend of mine in
less than ten years time had three serious
automobile accidents. People were killed.
His wife was almost killed. He was
seriously injured. They were healed by the
mercy of God. Cars were demolished.
He heard me teach along some of these
lines and he said to me, "Brother Hagin,
everyone of those could have been avoided
if I had listened to that inward intuition."
Yet in similar instances people will say,
"I don't know why that happened to such a
good Christian. He's a preacher."
(Preachers have to learn to listen to their
spirits just like you have to learn to listen
to your spirit.) Then they lay it off on God
and say that God did it.
This preacher said to me, "If I had
listened to that inward something—I just
had an intuition that something was about
to happen—I would have waited a little bit
and prayed. Instead I thought, I'm busy. I
don't have time to pray."
Many times, if we would have waited,
God would have shown us. We could have
avoided many things. But let's not moan
and groan about past failures. Let's just take
advantage of what is ours and see to it that it
doesn't happen again. We can do nothing
about what is past anyhow. Let's begin to
develop our spirits, and learn to listen to
them.
The Holy Spirit is abiding in your spirit.
It is your spirit that picks up these things
from the Holy Spirit and then passes them
on to your mind by an inward intuition, or
inward witness.
Jesus said, "If a man love me, he will keep
my words: and my Father will love him, and
we will come unto him, and make our abode
with him" (John 14:23). hi this passage of
Scripture, Jesus is talking about the Holy
Spirit's coming. Jesus and the Father in the
Person of the Holy Spirit come to abide in
us. An abode is
62 How You Can Be Led By The Spirit
of God
the place where one lives. Another
translation says, "We will come unto him,
and make our home with him."
The Holy Spirit, through the Apostle Paul
said, "Know ye not that ye are the temple of
God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in
you?" (1 Cor. 3:16). Another translation
says, "The Spirit of God is at home in you."
That's where He lives—in you!
The Bible says, ".. . for ye are the temple
of the living God; as God hath said, I will
dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will
be their God, and they shall be my people"
(2 Cor. 6:16).
Put those three Scriptures together:
Jesus answered and said unto him, If
a man love me, he will keep my
words: and my Father will love him,
and we will come unto him, and
make our abode with him . . . Know
ye not that ye are the temple of God,
and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in
you? . . . for ye are the temple of the
living God; as God hath said, I will
dwell in them, and walk in them; and
I will be their God, and they shall be
my people.
-John 14:23; 1
Corinthians 3:16;
2 Corinthians
6:16
We have never yet plumbed the depth of
what God is really saying. "I will dwell in
them. I will live in them. I will walk in
them." If God is dwelling in us—and He
is—then that is where He will speak to us.
15
Depend On Your Spirit
"For verily I say unto you, That
whosoever shall say
unto this mountain, Be thou removed,
and be thou cast
into the sea; and shall not doubt in
his heart, but shall
believe that those things which he
saith shall come to
pass; he shall have whatsoever he
saith. Therefore I
say unto you, What things soever ye
desire, when ye
pray, believe that ye receive them,
and ye shall have
them." -Mark
11:23,24
.our spirit knows things that your head
does not know. Because the Holy Spirit is
in your spirit.
When medical science gave me up to die
as a teenager and said they could do
nothing further for me, I knew somehow
that if there was help for me anywhere it
would be in the Bible.
I started with the New Testament
because I knew I didn't have much time.
Eventually I came to Mark 11:23 and 24.
When I came to Mark 11:24, something
from outside me somewhere said to my
mind, That doesn't mean what things
soever ye desire physically, or materially,
or financially. That just means whatsoever
things you desire spiritually. Healing has
been done away with.
I tried to get my pastor to come and tell
me what Mark 11:24 did mean. He did not
come. One preacher finally did come. He
patted my hand, put on a professional voice
and said, "Just be patient my boy, in a few
more days it will all be over."
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64 How You Can Be Led By The
Spirit of God
I accepted the verdict and lay there
expecting to die. It was two months before
I got back into the Bible and back to Mark
11:23 and 24.
I said, "Lord, I tried to get somebody to
help me and I couldn't. So I am going to tell
you what I am going to do. I am just going to
take You at your Word. When You were
here on earth, You said it. I am going to
believe it. If You didn't lie about it, I am
coming off this bed. Because I can believe
what You said I can believe."
Then I hit on this idea. (It took me a long
time because I had limited use of my hands.
They propped the Bible in front of me and I
scooted the pages.) I decided to run my
reference on faith and healing. I came to
James 5:14 and 15:
Is any sick among you? let him call
for the elders of the church; and let
them pray over him, anointing him
with oil in the name of the Lord:
And the prayer of faith shall save the
sick, and the Lord shall raise him up;
and if he have committed sins, they
shall be forgiven him.
—James
5:14,15
I thought all the rest of the healing
Scriptures and prayer promises hinged on
that—I thought you HAD to call for the
elders of the church. (You don't have
to—you just can if you need to.) So I began
to cry, "Dear Lord, if I have to call for the
elders of the church to anoint me with oil
to be healed, then I can't be healed. I don't
know any elders of the church that believe
in that."
I had been saved about six months, and I
had never heard an inward voice. I am not
talking about the voice of the Spirit of
God—that is more authoritative—I am
talking about that still small voice of my
spirit.
My spirit said to me, "Did you notice that
verse said that the prayer of faith shall save
the sick?"
Depend On Your Spirit
6
5
I had to look again. I'd had my mind on
the elders and had missed that. "Yes," I said
aloud, "that is what it says!" It came as a
real shock to me.
Then on the inside of me these words
were spoken, "You can pray that prayer as
well as anybody can." Hallelujah!
But my spiritual education was
slow—just like yours. I stayed in that bed
nine more months before I finally saw that
I had to believe I received my healing
before it was manifested.
It was while I was praying and saying,
"I believe that I receive my healing," that I
saw what I must do. I said, "I believe that I
receive healing from the top of my head to
the soles of my feet." Then I began to
praise God because I believed that I
received my healing.
Again, on the inside of me, I heard these
words—this was not that authoritative
Voice, but just a still small voice, so faint I
would not have heard it if my mind and
body had been very active—"Now you
believe that you are well."
I said, "I sure do."
That inward voice said, "Get up then.
Well people ought to be up at 10:30 in the
morning."
I had been paralyzed. It was a struggle. I
pushed myself. Finally I got up to where I
was draped over the bedpost. My knees
sagged down not far from the floor. I had
no feeling from my waist down. But draped
over that bedpost I said it again, "I want to
announce in the presence of Almighty God,
the Lord Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, and
the holy angels present in this room, and I
want to call the devil to record and all evil
spirits that may be present in this room, that
according to Mark 11:24,1 believe that I
receive my healing."
When I said that, physically, I felt
something. It felt like somebody above me
was pouring a pitcher of honey on me. I felt
it strike me on the top of my head. It seemed
to pile up like honey would, and then it
would begin to ooze down over me. It had a
warm glow to it. It spread down over my
head, down my neck
66 How You Can Be Led By The
Spirit of God
and shoulders, down my arms and out the
ends of my fingers, and down my body and
out the ends of my toes.
I was standing straight! I have been
straight ever since.
But I want you to see this. I listened to
my spirit. Faith is of the spirit. Your faith
will not work to its fullest until you learn
some of these things. Learn to depend on
Him that is in you. Learn to develop your
own spirit. Have faith in your faith.
16
Tender-Hearted
"For if our heart condemn us,
God is greater than our
heart, and knoweth all things.
Beloved, if our heart
condemn us not, then have we
confidence toward
God." -Uohn
3:20,21
D«
foes the Holy Spirit condemn you if
you do wrong as a Christian?
No. It is your spirit that condemns
you.
You need to learn that. It's a hard
lesson to learn, however, because we
have been taught incorrectly.
The Holy Spirit will not condemn
you. Why? Because God won't. Study
what the Holy Spirit through Paul
wrote in the Epistle to the Romans. He
asked: Who is it that condemns? Does
God condemn? No, it is God that
justifies.
Jesus said that the only sin the Holy
Spirit will convict the world of is the
sin of rejecting Jesus (John 16:7-9).
It is your own conscience—the voice
of your own spirit—that knows when
you have done wrong.
I have found that even when I do
wrong, though my spirit condemns me,
the Holy Spirit is there to comfort me,
to help me, to show me the way back.
You will never read in the Bible where
the Holy Spirit is a condemner. Jesus
called Him the Comforter. The
seven-fold meaning of that word from
the Greek is brought out in the
Amplified Bible:
67
68 How You Can Be Led By The Spirit
of God
And I will ask the Father, and He
will give you another Comforter
(Counselor, Helper, Intercessor,
Advocate, Strengthener and
Standby) that He may remain with
you forever,
-Johnl4:16Amp
/i/ied
He is all of those! He will stand by you when
nobody else will. He will help you. He is a
Helper!
It is your own spirit that knows the
moment you have done wrong. I am glad I
learned that early. It paid off richly for me
in life.
I was barely saved and healed and back
in high school when this incident occurred.
I really don't know why it slipped out; no
one in our family used profanity. But we
had a neighbor, bless his heart, who could,
as we say in Texas, "cuss" up a storm. You
could hear him all over our end of town. I
suppose I picked it up from him. Anyway,
I simply said to one of the boys, "Hell no
. . . something or other."
The minute I said that I knew on the
inside it was wrong. What was it that
condemned me? the Holy Spirit? No. It was
my spirit. My spirit, this new creature, this
new man doesn't talk that way. The Life
and Nature of God doesn't talk that way.
Now the flesh, the outward man, may want
to go on doing some things that he did,
and talking some ways he talked, but you
have to crucify the flesh. A good way to
crucify him is to bring it right out in the
open.
I did that right then. I didn't wait until I
was moved. In my heart I said, "Dear God,
forgive me for saying that." The young man
I said it to had walked away. I located him
and asked him to forgive me. He hadn't
noticed what I'd said; he was used to
people talking that way. But I had to get it
right.
It was the voice of my spirit. It was my
conscience. My conscience was tender, and
I didn't violate it. Unless you keep a tender
conscience, spiritual things will be
indistinct to you. Because your conscience
is the voice of your spirit—and it is
Tender-Hearted
6
9
your conscience, the voice of your spirit,
that will relate to your mind what the Spirit
of God is saying to you down in your heart.
The Bible speaks about Christians even
having their conscience seared:
Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having
their conscience seared with a hot
iron;
-1 Timothy
4:2
The first church I pastored was a
community church out in the country. I
usually went out Saturday night, spent
Saturday and Sunday nights, and came
back into town on Monday. I stayed quite
often in the home of a dear Methodist man.
This fine spiritual man, a great man really,
was 89 years old. He and I didn't get up as
early as the others on his farm. They would
be out doing chores or in the field when this
older gentleman and I had breakfast
together around 8 o'clock.
I didn't drink coffee, but this old
gentleman did. Now you could scarcely
believe it unless you saw it, but he had one
of those old-fashioned coffee pots—this
was the mid-30's—sitting on an
old-fashioned wood stove with coffee
boiling in it. I have seen him take that
boiling coffee, pour it into a big thick
mug— and it so hot it still simmered after
it was in that mug—turn it up to his mouth,
and drink the whole cup.
The first time I saw him do it, I
hollered. I felt like I was burning.
How could he do that? I couldn't. The
tissues of my lips, the inside of my mouth,
my throat and esophagus are so tender, just
one teaspoonful would have burned all the
way down. He drank a whole mug without
taking it away from his mouth.
He couldn't do that to begin with though.
Through years of drinking it hot, his lips
and mouth, throat and esophagus became
seared. Then he could drink it, and it didn't
bother him.
Spiritually, the same thing can happen.
70 How You Can Be Led By The Spirit
of God
Learn to keep a tender conscience.
Learn the minute you miss it and your
conscience condemns you, to correct it
right then. Don't wait until you go to
church. Immediately say, "Lord, forgive me.
I missed it." If you have to, if someone else
saw you, tell them. Say, "I did wrong.
Please forgive me. I shouldn't have said
that."
You will have to keep your spirit tender if
you are going to be led by the Spirit.
17
Feelings: Voice of the
Body
"The Spirit (Himself)
beareth witness with our
spirit, . . . ." —Romans
8:16
T
-L oo often people think that the
witness this verse talks about is a
physical something. It is not. It is a
spiritual something. It is the Spirit of
God bearing witness with our spirits.
He does not bear witness with our
bodies. You cannot go by physical
feeling.
We confuse things by the way we
talk. We say, "I feel God's presence."
No, we don't. We sense, spiritually, His
presence. Use the word feeling
advisedly; it leaves the wrong
impression that it is a physical feeling.
Don't mix the physical with it.
Feeling is the voice of the body.
Reason is the voice of the soul, or the
mind.
Conscience is the voice of the spirit.
To go by feeling is to get into
trouble. That is the reason so many
Christians are up-and-down (I call them
yo-yo Christians) in-and-out. They go
by their feelings. They don't walk by
faith. They don't walk by their spirits.
When they feel good they say,
"Glory to God, I'm saved. Hallelujah,
I'm filled with the Spirit. Everything is
fine." Then they feel bad, their face is
long and they say, "I've lost it all. I
don't feel like I did. So I must be
backslid."
I hear people, bless their hearts,
talking about being in the
7
1
72 How You Can Be Led By The
Spirit of God
valley, then being on the mountain, then
getting back into the valley again. I have
never been in the valley. I have been saved
45 years and I have never been anywhere
but on the mountain top. You do not have
to get down in the valley.
They talk about "valley experiences." I
have never had any valley experiences. Oh,
yes, there have been tests and trials, but I
was on the mountain top shouting my
way all the way through—living above it!
A woman we had pastored in years
gone by came to a meeting where we were
and told us about her 39-year-old
daughter. They were about to operate on
her when they discovered she had a tumor.
Then they also found through hospital
tests that she was a diabetic. They were
trying to get the diabetic condition under
control when she went into a coma. Three
doctors said she would never regain
consciousness; she would die.
This mother said, "Will you lay your
hands on this handkerchief?" I did, and we
prayed. Then that mother got on a bus and
rode 300 miles back to the hospital where
her daughter lay unconscious. She reached
under the oxygen tent and laid the
handkerchief on her chest. The minute it
touched her, she revived. She was healed,
born again, filled with the Holy Spirit and
began to talk in tongues, all in one
application.
The nurses got excited and called the
doctor. The doctor said, "This is wonderful
that she has regained consciousness. But
she must remain quiet." He gave her a shot
to quieten her down— but it never did take
effect. She just kept on talking in tongues
and shouting, "I'm healed. I'm healed. I'm
healed."
The next day they began to run tests. Her
blood was perfect. She no longer had
sugar. Then they couldn't find the tumor. It
had disappeared. After several days they
dismissed her.
She told my wife and me sometime later
that the doctor said, "We won't charge you
anything. We didn't do anything. A Higher
Power than us did it."
Feelings: Voice of the Body
7
3
Now, three years afterwards, when she
was 42 years old, her sister brought her to
our door at 2 o'clock one morning. She had
another tumor.
I thought she had come to be healed. So I
said, "You can be healed again. We will
just lay hands on you."
She said, with tears, "Brother Hagin, I
don't really care whether I get healed or
not. Really, if I could just get back to
where I was with God I would just as soon
die and go on to Heaven."
Then I assumed she had backslidden.
She looked so sad, I just knew she must
have committed some terrible sin. So I said,
"The Lord will forgive you . . ." And I went
through what the Bible says about that.
Then I said, "We'll all just kneel down here
by the couch. (My wife and the woman's
sister were there, too.) I will kneel beside
you. Now you don't have to confess to me,
but tell the Lord about it and He will
forgive you."
She looked up at me and said, "Brother
Hagin, I've searched my heart, and as far as
I know, I haven't done anything wrong."
I got aggravated. I'd gotten to bed
late—I was driving a distance and holding
meetings every night. And just right in the
middle of good sound sleep, early in the
morning, came this knocking at the door
that woke us. I guess I did speak sharply. I
know I did.
I said, "Get up out of the floor. Sit down
there on that couch." I was disgusted. "If
you haven't done anything wrong, what in
the world makes you think you have to get
back to God?"
"Well," she said, "I don't feel like I did."
I said, "What has that got to do with it?
If I were going by feeling, half the time
when I get up to preach I would announce
that I must be backslidden."
She looked at me. "Do you mean
preachers are that way, too?"
I said, "Yes, we're just as human as
anybody. And in fact, if I were going by
feelings right now, I would be having you
pray for
74 How You Can Be Led By The Spirit
of God
me. I don't feel a thing. I haven't felt a thing
since you got here."
She said, "What do you do then? How do
you pray through?"
I said, "I don't pray through. I'm
already through. A Christian ought to
walk through—he ought to be through, in
fellowship with God, every day, every
minute, every hour."
She said, "What do you do then?"
"Well," I said, "just sit there and watch
me. I'm going to close my eyes and pray,
but you keep your eyes open."
Then I prayed, "Dear Lord, I'm so glad
that I'm a child of God. I'm so glad that I'm
saved. I'm so glad I have been born again. I
don't feel anything—but that has nothing
to do with it. My inward man is a new
man. My inward man is a new creature in
Christ. I want to thank You that not only am
I born again—but I am filled with the Holy
Spirit. God the Father, God the Son, and
God the Holy Spirit reside in me. I want to
thank You for that. Hallelujah!"
I didn't feel anything, but I said it
anyhow. Then, when I confessed that, in
my spirit—He was in there all the time
—something began to bubble up inside me.
It was a move and manifestation of the
Spirit of God. I still did not feel anything.
But in my spirit I could sense that
bubbling. It got up in my throat. I began to
laugh—there is a laugh in the spirit. I began
to talk in tongues.
This lady said, "The expression on your
face changed. Your facejustlitup."
I said,"That was in there all the time.
Paul told Timothy to stir up the gift that
was in him. I just stirred up what I had in
me all the time."
She said, "Can I do that?"
I said, "Yes, you can."
She did—and stirred up what was in her
all the time.
I do not remember even praying about
the tumor. The last account I had of her, it
had disappeared.
Base your faith on the Word—not on
your feelings.
Feelings: Voice of the Body
7
5
Romans 8:16 does not say that the
Spirit beareth witness with our bodies, or
with our feelings.
Smith Wigglesworth, the great English
apostle of faith, said, "I am not moved by
what I feel. I am not moved by what I see. I
am moved only by what I believe. I cannot
understand God by feelings. I understand
God by what the Word says about Him. I
understand the Lord Jesus Christ by what
the Word says about Him. He is everything
the Word says that He is."
You cannot understand yourself by
feelings. Understand yourself as a
born-again, Spirit-filled Christian by what
the Word of God says about you. And when
you read what the Word says about
you—then, whether you feel like it or not,
say, "Yes, that's me. I have that. The Word
says I have that. I can do what the Word
says I can do. I am what the Word says I
am."
You will begin to develop spiritually
then.
And it is with your spirit that the Holy
Spirit bears witness.
18
Help From Within
"Howbeit when he, the Spirit of
truth, is come, he will guide you into
all truth: for he shall not speak of
himself; but whatsoever he shall
hear, that shall he speak: and he will
shew you things to come."
-John 16:13
J-Jet 3t's notice some things Jesus said about
the Holy Spirit.
" . . . he will guide you into all truth .
. . . " He will lead you. He will guide you.
" . . . for he shall not speak of himself; but
whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he
speak: . . . ." He does speak. Whatever He
hears God say, whatever He hears Jesus
say, He will speak to your spirit. Where is
He to speak? He is in your spirit—and that
is where He speaks. He doesn't speak out in
the air somewhere. It is on the inside. He
passes God's message on to your spirit—
either by an inward witness, or by an
inward voice.
" . . . he will shew you things to come .
. . . " I do not believe this just means that
the Holy Spirit will show us about future
events as recorded in the Word of God. It
also means that the Holy Spirit will show
you things to come. In my own individual
life, for instance, there has never been a
death in our close family that I did not
know about in advance. I knew two years
ahead of time that my father-in-law was
going to die. So I began to prepare my wife
for his death. She was his only daughter, the
baby of the family, and very close to her
father. I knew she would
77
78 How You Can Be Led By The
Spirit of God
take it hard. So I began to say to her,
"Honey, you know Mr. Rooker is getting
older. He's nearing 70 and God has only
promised us 70 or 80 years." Over the two
years I dropped a word here and there, just
getting her ready.
I was away in a meeting when the
telephone call came. After the service one
night, I was sitting in the hotel. The phone
rang. Something in me said, "That's for
you. This is what you have been talking
about for two years now." In 28 days he
was in Heaven. You are not unprepared
when you know things ahead of time.
But the Comforter, which is the Holy
Ghost, whom the Father will send in
my name, he shall teach you all
things, and bring all things to your
remembrance, whatsoever I have
said unto you.
-John
14:26
The Holy Spirit shall teach you.
He shall bring all things to your
remembrance.
People often ask me how I remember
things. At one time I could quote
three-fourths of the New Testament.
"How do you memorize?"
I always answer, "I never memorized
Scripture in my life. I know nothing about
memorization. I suppose you could develop
your mind if you would work at it. But I just
get to talking and it rises up in me. He
brings it to my remembrance. He is in
there."
The Holy Spirit will show you things to
come and bring things to your
remembrance if you will learn to cooperate
with Him.
19
Number Three:
The Voice of the Holy
Spirit
"While Peter thought on the vision,
the Spirit said unto him, Behold,
three men seek thee." —Acts 10:19
Tod leads us by what we call the still
small voice. But He also leads by the Voice
of the Spirit of God speaking to us. This is
the third most important way we are led by
the Spirit. Number one is by the inward
witness. Number two is by the inward still
small voice. Number three is by the Voice
of the Holy Spirit.
There is a difference between the inward
Voice of the Holy Spirit speaking to our
spirits, and that still small voice which is
the voice of our own spirit speaking to us.
When the Holy Spirit within you speaks, it
is more authoritative.
Sometimes it is so real—although it is
inside you—you look around to see who
said it. You think somebody behind you
said something. Then you realize it was in
you.
Remember in the Old Testament how
young Samuel heard a Voice call his name,
"Samuel, Samuel"? He thought Eli was
calling him. He jumped up and ran in to
find out what he wanted. Eli said, "No, I
didn't call you." Samuel went back to bed.
Then again he heard, "Samuel, Samuel."
Again he ran to Eli. "No, I didn't call you."
It happened the third time. Finally, it
7
9
80 How You Can Be Led By The
Spirit of God
dawned on Eli what was happening. He
said, "The next time He calls you, answer
Him." Samuel answered that Voice, and
the Lord spoke to him.
I have found in 44 years of ministry that
when God moved in a more spectacular
way—all of His leadings are supernatural;
some are not so spectacular—when He
spoke to me in what seemed to me an
audible voice, for instance, there was
rough sailing ahead. If He had not spoken
so spectacularly I would not have stayed
steady.
Concerning the last church I pastored,
for example, I heard the pastorate was open
and made arrangements to preach there one
Wednesday night. During the period of time
before I was to go there to preach I held a
three-week revival in Houston. During this
revival the pastor, his brother (who was
also a preacher), and I met at the church
every day to pray about the night services.
The church with the open pastorate was
their home church. Every day they would
ask me, "Have you prayed about that
church yet?"
Finally, I did. I just said to the Lord, "I'm
going up there next Monday and I'm going
to preach Wednesday. I don't know
whether You want me to pastor there or
not. I don't know if I even want to pastor
it. But whatever You say about it is fine
with me."
That is all I said. Then I heard a Voice
speak so plainly I jumped. I looked behind
me. I thought really that one of those
preachers heard me say it and was joking
me. But I heard this Voice. To me it was
audible. It said, "You are the next pastor
there. And that will be the last church you
ever pastor."
(You could interpret that a thousand
different ways! You could let the devil tell
you, you were going to die. Or that you
were going to be defeated. But it meant that
my ministry would change to a field
ministry.)
About then those two preachers walked
down the aisle. As usual, they asked,
"Have you prayed about that church yet?"
Number Three: The Voice of the Holy
Spirit
8
1
I said, "You two fellows are looking at
the next pastor."
"Oooh, if you knew that church like we
know it, you wouldn't say that. It's split
right down the middle. Anything half the
church is for, the other half is against. It
takes two-thirds of the vote to get elected
as pastor, and we'll just be honest with you,
you can't get elected."
"I don't know about that. I just know I'm
the next pastor."
"Well, you don't know that church like
we do."
I said, "No, but I know Jesus. And I know
the Spirit of God. I know what He said to
me."
After I preached the first time, I saw why
God moved in such a spectacular way.
Every word I spoke bounced right back to
me like a rubber ball off the back wall. It
was tough.
I thought I was only going to preach one
night, but they had arranged that I would
preach several nights. Each night we had to
move to a different place to stay. We were
at one deacon's house one night, another
deacon's house the next.
One deacon told us, "If you stayed with
me all the time some of the rest of them
would probably get jealous and think I'm
for you and they would vote against you."
We kept all our things in the car, and
every night we would get out just enough
for the next day. And every night when we
got off to bed, I would say to my wife, "If
God hadn't spoken so spectacularly to me, I
would just get up, get the children, get into
the car, and leave without saying a word to
anyone."
My flesh wanted to leave so badly. My
mind wanted to leave. My spirit held me
steady because God had spoken in such a
spectacular way.
They had the election. I got every vote.
Everyone said, "It's the greatest miracle of
the century—that anybody could get that
kind of vote from this church."
I knew all the time I would get it. The
Spirit of God told me.
20
Judging By the Word
"Prove all things; . . . ." -1
Thessalonians 5:21
lways remember this: the Bible teaches
that the Spirit of God and the Word of God
agree. Anytime the Spirit of God speaks to
you it will always be in line with the Word.
People have heard "voices" and gotten
every kind of "revelation" you can imagine.
Some people are always claiming to hear a
voice.
You can, and you should, judge those
things. You can judge whether it is right or
wrong simply by judging it by the Word.
Several years ago I was preaching in
California. A woman who had invited the
pastor, his wife, and me to her home for the
noon meal said, "Brother Hagin, I want to
tell you what the Lord said to me. I want to
give you my revelation."
Before she opened her mouth I sensed by
the inward witness in my spirit that
something was not right. But she
persisted, and I agreed. She had fed us in
her lovely home, and now she wanted to
give me this "revelation." She began to
relate it and talked for about ten minutes
before I stopped her. I just couldn't stand
anymore.
"Please," I said, "wait a minute. There's a
Bible there on the table by the chair. Pick it
up and open it to. ..." I gave her a chapter
and verse in the New Testament. "Read
that."
She read it. Then I gave her another. She
read it. I pointed
83
84 How You Can Be Led By The Spirit
of God
her to several Scriptures. Everything she
read contradicted what she said.
I said, "See, I cannot accept what you are
saying. It is not in line with this Book.
Therefore it cannot be the Spirit of God."
"But, Brother Hagin, I was praying at
the altar."
I said, "I don't care if you were praying
on top of the church. It's still not right. It is
not in line with the Word."
"Yes, but I know God gave this to me."
I said, "No, He didn't. This is His Word
and what you are saying is in direct
opposition to what the Word of God says.
Can you give me any Scripture to
substantiate what you are saying?"
"No. But I know I heard the voice speak
to me."
"I just gave you five portions of
Scripture, and with a little thought I could
have given you twenty, that contradict what
you are saying."
"Well, yes," she said, "Bible or no Bible, I
know God spoke to me and I am going to
stay with it."
As we left the pastor said, "I didn't want
to say anything to you before, but this dear
woman was a fine saint of God, on fire for
the Lord. She was a blessing to the church.
Now she has been put out of every Full
Gospel church in the city because she
persists in pushing this off on everybody."
We are not to seek voices.
We should not follow voices.
We should follow the Word of God.
I preached a meeting in Oregon in the
summer of 1954. At the close of one of the
first services, I was laying hands on the
people who stood in the long prayer line. I
asked each one what they came for before I
ministered to them. When I came to one
woman, her husband who had her by the
arm said, "We have come for my wife's
healing." He told me she had had a mental
breakdown.
I did not know this woman was a
former Sunday School
Judging By the Word
8
5
teacher in that church, nor that her husband
was a deacon.
But when I laid hands on her, just like
it ran off on a television screen in a second
of time, I knew all this about the situation.
I knew it by the spiritual gift called the
word of knowledge (1 Cor. 12:8). I saw her
in a large tent meeting in one of Oregon's
largest cities. I saw her sitting in the
congregation with thousands of people. She
heard the evangelist tell how God spoke to
him in an audible voice and called him
into the ministry.
I do not doubt that. She failed to realize,
however, that he did not ask God to speak to
him that way. God just did it on His own.
We have no right to seek that God speak
to us in an audible voice. If God told us He
would in His Word, then all of us would
have a right to claim it. This evangelist
didn't even particularly expect God to
speak in that way—but if God wants to, He
can, and He saw fit to do so.
At the time she heard him tell that, she
was all right mentally. But then she began
to seek that God would speak to her in an
audible voice—and the devil
accommodated her. She began to hear
voices. They drove her insane. She was now
about to be taken to the asylum for the
second time.
I also saw this in the spirit. Her husband
had taken her to this same evangelist for
deliverance. She did not receive
deliverance. Now he blamed that
evangelist. He had taken her to another
leading evangelist. She had failed to be
delivered. Now this deacon is angry with
him. I knew she would not be delivered if I
laid hands on her, and then he would be
angry with me. So I took my hand off of her.
I said to the man, "Take your wife into
the pastor's study. Wait there. When I
finish this line, I will talk with you."
The pastor and I went into the study
together.
"First of all," I said, "I have never been
to Oregon before. I have never seen you
folks. I don't even know if the pastor knows
you."
86 How You Can Be Led By The Spirit
of God
The pastor said, "He's one of our
deacons."
"Well," I said, "the pastor will tell you
he has not told me anything."
Then I related what I had seen.
The deacon said, "That's exactly right."
"Now," I said, "I will tell you why I
didn't minister to her. You see, she wants
to hear these voices."
Then I said, "She is not that much gone
mentally that she doesn't know what I am
saying."
She spoke up, "I know exactly what you
are saying."
I said, "Sister, you are not going to be
delivered until you want to be delivered. As
long as you like it the way it is—as long as
you want to hear these voices—you are
going to hear them."
She said, "I want to hear them."
As long as a sinner wants to live in sin,
God will let him live in sin. But if he wants
to change, God will meet him.
And even though a person is a Christian,
does not mean he loses his free moral
agency. He does not become a robot, a
machine where God pushes a button and
he automatically has to do whatever He
desires. He is still a free moral agent. As
long as he wants things like they are, they
will stay that way. But if he wants to
cooperate with God, he can be helped.
This woman said, "That's the way I want
it."
I said, "I knew that the minute I touched
you. That's the reason I didn't minister to
you. As long as you want it that way, it's
going to be that way."
DO NOT SEEK VOICES!
There are, it may be, so many kinds of
voices in the world, and none of them
is without signification.
-1 Corinthians
14:10
We are not to accept anything without
examining it in the light of the Word of
God.
I am glad that I learned some of these
things early in life. I
Judging By the Word
8
7
mentioned my healing as a young boy just
acting on Mark 11:23 and 24.
I was born with a deformed heart. I never
ran and played like other children. I
became bedfast four months before my
sixteenth birthday. My body became
practically totally paralyzed. I wasted away
until I weighed only 89 pounds.
One day I asked the fifth doctor on the
case, "Is something wrong with my
eyesight, or with my blood? When Dr.
Mathis took blood from my finger, it didn't
look red."
This doctor said, "I will tell you the
truth, son. And I will explain it to you in
layman's terms. The white blood corpuscles
eat up the red corpuscles faster than you
can build them up, or we, medically, can
do anything about it. If you didn't have the
heart condition, if you didn't have the
paralysis, this incurable blood disease
alone would prove fatal."
I knew nothing about divine healing. I
didn't know anybody in all the world
believed in divine healing. When I found it
in the Bible, I thought I had found
something nobody else knew anything
about. And I acted on God's Word and was
healed.
The members of my family were what
we call normal Christians. Literally, they
were baby Christians. They were saved,
but they were not taught beyond that. They
were ignorant of the Word of God
concerning healing. (Our church taught
God could heal, if He would. Others taught
not only that He would not, but that He
could not.) So when I began to see certain
things in the Bible and began to talk to my
family about them, they discouraged me. I
had enough sense just to stay with the Bible
and keep those things to myself.
Nobody was in the room when I received
my healing. I had been getting up and
walking around the room for a couple of
days before I said to Momma, "Bring me a
pair of shoes and socks, some underclothes,
and a pair of pants and a shirt. (I had worn
nothing but bedclothes for 16 months.) I am
going to get up and go to the breakfast table
in the morning."
88 How You Can Be Led By The Spirit
of God
"Oh, son, do you know what you're
doing?"
It took me 45 minutes to talk her into the
notion of laying out those clothes.
We made our home with our
grandparents on our mother's side and I
asked her not to tell the rest of the family.
Now you could just mark it down.
Grandpa got up early and sat out on the
porch swing. When you heard that porch
swing creak as he got up and headed
toward the back of the house to the dining
room, there was no use in looking at your
watch; it was 7:30. Grandpa ran on
schedule. If you did look at your watch,
and it didn't say 7:30, you had better set it.
It was 7:30.
My bedroom was in the front of the
house. At 7:30 that August morning I
heard that porch swing creak. I heard his
footsteps as he walked to the back of the
house. I was already fully clothed, sitting
in a chair in my room. I gave them time to
get seated at the table. Then I walked out
of my room, across another bedroom, and
into the dining room.
They did not expect that. Grandpa, a
man of few words, looked up and said, "Is
the dead raised? Is Lazarus raised up?"
I said, "Yes, the Lord has raised me up."
Then he asked me to offer the blessing. I
prayed. And we ate. It is amazing how
quickly you can eat if you don't talk so
much. You didn't talk at Grandpa's
table—especially the young folks. Within
15 minutes we were finished.
I went back to my room. It was 10
minutes till 8 o'clock. I knew Momma
would come in about 8 to make up the bed.
Usually I was in it and she would give me
my bath. Just two days before, the day I
was healed, she had bathed me. I was that
helpless. So this Thursday morning, even
though my heart was beating right, I felt
weak from putting out so much energy.
So I thought, I'm just going to lie down
across the bed and rest till Momma comes to
clean the room. Then I'll go out and sit with
Grandpa in the swing. I had in mind to
walk up town around 10 o'clock.
Judging By the Word
8
9
I dozed off to sleep and slept ten
minutes. At 8 o'clock I suddenly became
wide awake. I thought Momma was in the
room. Somebody was in the room. I didn't
see him, but I heard this voice. To me it
was audible.
It spoke in a slow, deep monotone and
even quoted Scripture. It said, "AND
WHAT IS YOUR LIFE? IT IS EVEN A
VAPOR THAT APPEARETH FOR A
TIME, AND THEN VANISHETH AWAY."
There was a pause.
Then the voice said, "AND TODAY
THOU SHALT SURELY DIE."
Every voice is not God. The first audible
voice I ever heard was the devil, but I didn't
recognize that then. I thought God was right
there in that room.
I sat up in the bed. Thoughts came to
my mind faster than machine gun bullets
fly. I knew James said, "For what is your
life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for
a little time, and then vanisheth away"
(James 4:14). I knew that was Scripture.
And I knew the Lord told Isaiah to tell
Hezekiah, "Set thine house in order: for
thou shalt die, and not live" (Is. 38:1).
Also, back before I had known about
divine healing, for the first six months of
being bedfast, I had prayed in the only realm
I knew. The doctors had said I had to die
and I accepted it. So I prayed, "Lord, just let
me know ahead of time so I will have time
to tell everybody good-bye."
So these thoughts, like another voice
speaking to my mind, said, God has moved
in this supernatural way to let you know you
are going to die so you will have time to tell
everybody good-bye. Divine healing is right.
You have been healed. (The devil couldn't
argue that. I already had the Word on
that.) Your family knows you have been
healed. They can see that. But remember,
the Bible said, "It is appointed unto man
once to die." Your appointed time has come.
You are going to die today.
I got up off the bed—I thought God was
standing right in that
90 How You Can Be Led By The Spirit
of God
room—and I tiptoed across the room and
sat down in a chair by the window. There I
waited, from about 8:30 in the morning
until 2:30 in the afternoon, to die.
About 2:30, still sitting in that chair,
some words came floating up from
somewhere down inside me. I didn't know
then what I know now. But I was born of
the Spirit. The Holy Spirit was in my spirit.
And He is the one who wrote the Bible.
Holy men of old wrote as they were moved
by the Spirit. The Spirit knows what is in
that Book. Because He was in me, then my
spirit knew some things that the Holy
Spirit knows.
So these words came floating up from
somewhere inside me to my mind, With
long life will I satisfy him, and show him
my salvation.
I didn't listen to them. I just let them
float away from me. I still sat there waiting
to die.
The second time, these words came
floating up from inside me to my mind,
With long life will I satisfy him, and show
him my salvation.
I picked them up and turned them over a
couple of times in my mind. Then I
thought, Yes, but God has moved in this
supernatural way to let me know I am going
to die today. When I got my mind on that,
those words disappeared.
The third time, as I sat there, these words
came floating up, that inward something
said to my mind, With long life will I
satisfy him, and show him my salvation.
For a moment, I picked them up and
repeated them just in my mind. Then I said,
in a whisper, "Yes, but God has moved in
this supernatural way to let me know that I
am going to die." Again, when I got my
mind on that, I missed it.
The fourth time, a little more
authoritatively, the Spirit of God spoke. I
jumped. I thought someone had slipped up
behind me. The Voice of the Spirit of God
said, "With long life will I satisfy him, and
show him my salvation."
I said, "Who said that?" I meant, who is in
here talking to me.
Judging By the Word
9
1
But the Voice answered and said, "The
91st Psalm."
My Bible was on the floor under the
chair I had been sitting in all day. I hadn't
even looked at it. I picked it up now and
turned to the 91st Psalm. When I got
down to the end, sure enough, it said,
"With long life will I satisfy him, and shew
him my salvation" (v. 16).
But do you think the devil will give up
that quickly? Oh, no. Another voice—it
seemed like something sitting on my
shoulder—said into my natural ear and
mind, "Yes, but that's in the Old Testament.
That's just for the Jews. That's not for the
Church."
I sat there and thought for a moment.
Then I said, "I know what I'll do. I will run
my references. If I can find anything in the
New Testament like that I will know it
belongs to me and to the Church."
I started with Psalm 91. A reference to
"with long life" led me into Proverbs. Then
the Word began to enlighten me. In
Proverbs I began to see that the audible
voice could not have been God.
The voice had quoted Hebrews 9:27,
"And as it is appointed unto men once to
die, but after this the judgment," but then
had misinterpreted it. Because he knew I
didn't know better the voice said,
"Everybody has an appointed time to die."
You hear people say that all the time. Even
born-again, Spirit-filled Christians say,
"When your time comes you're going to
die." That is not true. You do not have an
appointed time to die.
I read in the Book of Proverbs again and
again that if you do certain things, your
days will be shortened. But doing other
things will add unto you length of days. I
knew God's Word was right. I knew that
even though that voice picked a verse out of
a chapter and gave it to me, it was not God.
Because it was not in line with the rest of
the Word of God.
I continued to run references. This
brought me over into the New Testament. I
came over to Ephesians 6:1-3. And then
into
92 How You Can Be Led By The
Spirit of God
First and Second Peter. And I found that
Paul and Peter quoted the Old Testament
concerning long life.
I jumped up out of that chair with my
Bible in one hand. I doubled up my fist,
kicked with my foot, and said, "Devil, you
get out of here. That was you talking to me.
That was you that spoke to me in that
supernatural voice. I want you to know that
I'm not going to die today! And I'm not
going to die tomorrow! And I'm not going
to die next week! And I'm not going to die
next month! And I'm not going to die next
year! And I'm not going to die the next 5
years! And I'm not going to die the next 10
years! And I'm not going to die the next 15
years! And I'm not going to die the next 20
years! And I'm not going to die the next 25
years! And I'm not going to die the next 30
years! And I'm not going to die the next 40
years! And I'm not going to die the next 50
years! And I'm not going to die the next 55
years!"
I was 17; that put me up to 72.
He said, "With long life will I satisfy
thee." If I am not satisfied with life at 72,
then I will go on until I am satisfied!
21
My Spirit?
or The Holy
Spirit?
"The spirit of man is
the candle of the Lord
-Proverbs
20:27
Sor
Dmeone might ask, "How can I tell
whether it is my own spirit, or the Holy
Spirit telling me to do something?"
The spirit of man is the candle of the
Lord.
"But it may just be me wanting to do it."
Define your terms. If by "me" you mean
the flesh, of course you cannot always obey
the flesh. But if by "me" you mean the
inward man, the real you, that is all right.
Go ahead and do what he wants you to do.
If your spirit is a new creature in Christ
Jesus, and old things are passed away, and
all things are become new, and your spirit
has the Life and Nature of God in it, and
the Holy Spirit in it, and your spirit is in
fellowship with God, it is not going to tell
you to do something that is not right. If
you are a Spirit-filled Christian, your
inward man has the Holy Spirit in His
fullness—not in a measure, in His
fullness—making His home in you.
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94 How You Can Be Led By The
Spirit of God
It is not the inward man of the Christian
that wants to do wrong—it is the outward
man. You ought to be able to tell whether
it is the flesh wanting to do something, or
the spirit. Here is a text that has been a
puzzle to many:
Whosoever is born of God doth not
commit sin; for his seed remaineth in
him: and he cannot sin, because he is
born of God.
-Uohn3:
9
This is talking about the inward man.
Physically we are born of human parents
and we partake of their nature. Spiritually
we are born of God and partake of His
nature. God's nature is not the nature to do
wrong.
I have missed it a lot of times as a
Christian. But my inward man didn't do it.
He didn't even agree with me when I did it.
He tried to get me not to do it. My heart
wept because I did it. My flesh threw me
and I missed it, but my spirit never did
consent to it. That seed is in my spirit, not
in my flesh.
If you continue to allow your flesh to
dominate you, you will continue to miss it.
If you continue to let your natural mind
dominate you, and do not get your mind
renewed with the Word, you will continue
to miss it.
That's why Paul wrote born-again,
Spirit-filled Christians at Rome and told
them to do two things: 1. present your
bodies, 2. renew your minds with the Word
(Rom. 12:1,2).
Until your mind is renewed with the
Word of God, your flesh and your
unrenewed mind will dominate your spirit.
That will keep you a baby Christian—a
carnal Christian.
Paul said to the church at Corinth, "I,
brethren, could not speak unto you as unto
spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto
babes in Christ" (1 Cor. 3:1).
"For ye are yet carnal," he said (v. 3).
One translation says, "For you are yet
body-ruled."
Then he told them, "and (ye) walk as
men" (v. 3). Another
My Spirit? or The Holy Spirit?
9
5
translation says, "Ye walk as mere men."
What did he mean? He meant they were
walking and doing things just like
unsaved men do.
When you get your mind renewed with
the Word, then your mind will side in with
your spirit instead of your body. And the
two of them—your spirit through your
mind—will control your body.
My spirit will not tell me something
wrong. It has the Nature of God in it, it has
the Life of God in it, it has the Love of God
in it, it has the Spirit of God in it.
Whereby are given unto us exceeding
great and precious promises: that by
these ye might be partakers of
the divine nature . . . .
-2 Peter
1:4
We are born of God. Then we feed on the
Word of God. By so doing we are partakers
of the divine nature, God's nature. If we
have the divine nature in us, our spirit
will not tell us to do something wrong.
Whatever your spirit tells you will be
right.
22
I Perceive
"Now when much time was spent,
and when sailing
was now dangerous, because the fast
was now already
past, Paul admonished them, And
said unto them,
Sirs, I perceive that this voyage will
be with hurt and
much damage, not only of the
lading and ship, but
also of our lives." -Acts
27:9,10
Xaul said, "I perceive . . . ." He did not say,
I have a revelation. He did not say, the Lord
told me. He said, "I perceive."
How did he perceive it?
By the inward witness. He did not
perceive it mentally. He did not perceive it
physically. In his spirit he had this witness.
A family of seven went out to eat. The
coffee and soft drinks and the children's
food had already arrived at the table when
the father suddenly said, "Let's rush home."
"Why?"
"I don't know. I just have an urge, a
perception, that we should."
They rushed home. A fire had started. If
they had waited everything would have
burned. But the witness of the Spirit
warned them in time.
If it had burned down, someone might
have said, "God did that. He had some
purpose in it."
No, we have missed it because we didn't
listen. We have not been spirit-conscious.
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98 How You Can Be Led By The Spirit
of God
You cannot find anywhere in the Bible
where God causes these things to happen to
teach them something. If they had listened to
Paul they could have saved the ship and the
merchandise. As it was, they lost all that and
almost lost their lives. They would have lost
their lives if they had not started to listen to
Paul.
God is not an enemy! He is trying to help
us! He is not working against us! He is
working for us!
As we become more spirit-conscious we
can learn how to better cooperate with Him.
Remember that the primary way God leads
His children is by the inward witness.
23
Spectacular Guidance
"Whereupon, O king Agrippa, I was
not disobedient unto the heavenly
vision:"
-Acts 26:19
God leads us today just like He led the first
Christians. His Word works now just like
it did then. It has not changed. The Spirit
of God has not changed. God does not
change.
The early believers did not have one
church back then and we have another
church now. We have made a mistake in
thinking that. We are in the same age they
were in—the Church Age. We are in the
same Church. We have the same Holy
Spirit. It has seemed to us, however, that
they had a whole lot we don't have. Not so.
"For as many as are led by the Spirit of
God, they are the sons of God." There are
sons of God today. And the Spirit of God is
still leading sons of God.
So we look into the Acts of the Apostles
and elsewhere in the Bible to see how He
led them. At times some received guidance
through a vision. Others received guidance
from an angel who appeared and told them
what to do.
Such phenomena, however, did not
happen every day in these people's lives.
They occurred once or twice in a lifetime for
most. So these are not the ordinary ways
God leads. We get the impression that
nearly every day an angel
appeared to
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Spirit of God
somebody and told them something. Not so.
Too many times while God is trying to
bear witness with our spirit, trying to guide
us the way He said He would in His Word,
we do not listen because we want
something such as a vision or an angel.
We have no right to seek a vision. We
have no right to ask for an angel. There are
no Scriptures which say that we should. We
do have a right to claim what the Bible
promises. If God wants to send an angel,
fine. If He wants to give a vision, fine.
As a young minister I did the same
thing most Christians have done in the
babyhood stage of their Christianity. I
heard people talking about visions and
angels, and I prayed something like that
would happen to me. It never did.
Then I matured spiritually until I never
expected it to happen. I did not pray that it
would happen. I did not expect it. But back
in 1949 I was praying one day in the last
church I pastored. I had shut myself up in
the church to wait on God because I had a
witness in my spirit that I should do so.
Then the Holy Spirit—not my spirit—spoke
to me.
Before I tell you what He said, look at
this passage of Scripture with me and see
how Peter saw a vision and then was led by
the Voice of the Spirit of God:
On the morrow, as they went on
their journey, and drew up nigh unto
the city, Peter went up upon the
housetop to pray about the sixth
hour: And he became very hungry,
and would have eaten: but while they
made ready, he fell into a trance,
And saw heaven opened, and a
certain vessel descending unto him,
as it had been a great sheet knit at
the four corners, and let down to the
earth:
-Acts
10:9-11
God showed Peter through a vision that He
was going to bring in the Gentiles. Now we
will skip to the 19th verse:
While Peter thought on the vision,
THE SPIRIT SAID unto him,
Behold, three men seek thee. Arise
therefore, and get thee down, and go
with them, doubting nothing: for I
have sent them.
-Acts
10:19,20
Spectacular Guidance
10
1
These were three men from Cornelius'
household. After Peter went there and
preached to these Gentiles, he was called
on the carpet up in Jerusalem. In the 11th
chapter of Acts, Peter is rehearsing the
matter there.
And, behold, immediately there were
three men already come unto
the house where I was, sent from
Caesarea unto me. AND THE
SPIRIT BADE ME GO with them,
nothing doubting ___________
-Acts
11:11,12
The Holy Spirit spoke to Peter. It may
have been that Peter looked around to see
who said that. I don't know. But he knew
that the Spirit bade him go.
The Spirit spoke to me as I was waiting
there in my church. The Spirit said, "I am
going to take you on to revelations and
visions."
Immediately, revelations, in line with
the Word—I'm not talking about
something out of line with the
Bible—began to come. Then in 1950 the
visions began to come. Eight times Jesus
Himself appeared to me and talked to me.
There were also other visions.
24
The Spirit Bade Me Go
"Now there were in the church that
was at Antioch
certain prophets and teachers; as
Barnabas, and
Simeon that was called Niger, and
Lucius ofCyrene,
and Manaen, which had been
brought up with Herod
the tetrarch, and Saul. As they
ministered to the Lord,
and fasted, THE HOLY GHOST
SAID, Separate me
Barnabas and Saul for the work
whereunto I have
called them." -Acts
13:1,2
The
Holy Ghost said. It would be of
interest, first of all, to notice under what
conditions the Holy Ghost said something.
"As they ministered to the Lord, and
fasted, the Holy Ghost said
I am convinced we need to have services
where we minister to the Lord. Too often
we just minister to one another. Bible
studies are good; we need them. Special
singing is fine. But too many times we are
not singing to the Lord; we are singing to
the congregation. Let's have some services
where we minister to the Lord. Where we
wait on Him. In that kind of an atmosphere
the Holy Ghost can speak to us.
This was a group of five ministers. I do
not know how the Holy Ghost spoke to
them. It could have been that one of the
prophets spoke it out. Of this I am
sure—they all heard and they all agreed that
the Holy Ghost was talking.
The Holy Ghost said, "Separate me
Barnabas and Saul for
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104 How You Can Be Led By The Spirit
of God
the work whereunto I have called them . . .
. "
Peter said, "The Spirit bade me go . . . . "
After I had been in the ministry many
years, death came and fastened itself upon
my body. I know when death comes; I have
been dead twice and came back. I know
how it feels. Actually, I started to fall into
the arms of death, when the Spirit of God
came on me and lifted me up.
I heard a Voice speak. To me it was
audible. I believe it was Jesus. I know that it
was the Holy Spirit speaking. We discussed
earlier how the Holy Ghost speaks not of
Himself, but whatever He hears, that shall
He speak. So He heard God or Jesus say it,
and He said it.
It sounded like a man's voice. It said,
"Thou shalt not die, but thou shalt live. I
want you to go teach my people faith. I
have taught you faith through my Word. I
have permitted you to go through certain
experiences. You have learned faith both
through my Word and by experience. Now
go teach my people what I have taught you.
Go teach my people faith."
The moment that voice ceased speaking I
was perfectly well.
I have endeavored to be obedient to that
heavenly Voice. That is the reason I teach
faith so much—I am supposed to do it.
I will refer again now to the time Jesus
appeared to me in 1959 in El Paso, Texas.
It was during this vision that He told me,
"Go teach my people how to be led by my
Spirit." I have been dilatory about this. But
I am going to do more teaching on this
from now on. This is the reason for this
book.
25
Guidance Through Prophecy
"Follow after charity, and desire
spiritual gifts, but rather that ye may
prophesy." -1 Corinthians 14:1
"Are all apostles? are all prophets?
are all teachers? are all workers of
miracles?" -1 Corinthians
12:29
-Laul, speaking to the elders of the church
at Ephesus in his farewell message said,
"And now, behold, I go bound in the spirit
unto Jerusalem, not knowing the things
that shall befall me there: Save that the
Holy Ghost witnesseth in every city, saying
that bonds and afflictions abide me" (Acts
20:22,23).
Then in the 21st chapter, Paul on his
journey landed at Tyre where the ship was
to unlade her burden. Luke, the writer of
Acts was with Paul. He wrote, "And finding
disciples, we tarried there seven days: who
said to Paul through the Spirit, that he
should not go up to Jerusalem" (v. 4).
Paul continued on his journey:
And the next day we that were of
Paul's company departed, and came
unto Caesarea: and we entered into
the house of Philip the evangelist,
which was one of the seven; and
abode with him. And the same man
had four daughters, virgins, which
did prophesy. And as we tarried
there many days, there came down
from Judaea
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106 How You Can Be Led By The
Spirit of God
a certain prophet, named Agabus.
And when he was come unto us, he
took Paul's girdle, and bound his
own hands and feet, and said, Thus
saith the Holy Ghost, So shall the
Jews at Jerusalem bind the man that
owneth this girdle, and shall deliver
him into the hands of the Gentiles.
And when we heard these things,
both we, and they of that place,
besought him not to go up to
Jerusalem. Then Paul answered,
What mean ye to weep and to break
mine heart? for I am ready not to be
bound only, but also to die at
Jerusalem for the name of the Lord
Jesus. And when he would not be
persuaded, we ceased, saying, The
will of the Lord be done.
-Acts
21:8-14
Some have thought that Paul missed it. But,
when he did go up there and was arrested,
Jesus stood by Paul in the night. He
appeared to him in a vision. He did not
rebuke Paul. He did not tell him that he had
missed it. He said, "Be of good cheer, Paul:
for as thou hast testified of me in Jerusalem,
so must thou bear witness also at Rome"
(Acts 23:11).
No, Paul did not miss it. What God was
doing was preparing Paul for what was
ahead of him.
Notice that we have two things here:
1. the gift of prophecy, 2. the ministry of
the prophet. They are different. They are
not the same. It is a mistake to confuse the
two, yet this is often done.
The fact that one prophesies does not
make him a prophet. The Word of God
plainly teaches that everyone should desire
to prophesy (1 Cor. 14:1). If prophesying
made you a prophet, then it would seem the
Lord said everyone should desire to be a
prophet. Yet Paul asked, "Are all apostles?
are all prophets? . . . . " The answer is no.
Since all could not be prophets, God would
not tell us to seek something we could not
have.
The simple gift of prophecy is speaking
unto men to edification and exhortation and
comfort (1 Cor. 14:3). Prophecy is a
supernatural utterance in a known
tongue—your own tongue. (Speaking in
tongues is supernatural utterance in an
Guidance Through Prophecy
10
7
unknown tongue—a tongue unknown to
you.) Prophecy can be used in prayer, as
well as tongues.
Sometimes when you are prophesying, it
seems like there are two of you. It seems to
me like I am standing right beside myself.
You see, it is coming from my inward man
where the Spirit of God who is prophesying
abides. I listen with my natural
ears to see what He said.
The Office of the Prophet
Now there is the office of the prophet.
Without going into detail about it we will
touch it briefly concerning guidance. For
one to be a prophet, he stands in that
office and uses that ministry. Other
spiritual gifts besides prophecy must
operate in his ministry. The simple gift of
prophecy, as we have said, is for speaking
unto men for edification, and exhortation,
and comfort. In this simple gift of
prophecy there is no foretelling, no
prediction whatsoever. However, in the
ministry of the prophet there is foretelling
and prediction. He has the revelation gifts
(the word of wisdom, the word of
knowledge, and/or the discerning of
spirits) in operation along with prophecy.
It is important to realize that spiritual
things can be misused just as natural things
can be misused. Some folks have never
realized that. They think that just because it
is spiritual it has to be perfect—that it
cannot be misused.
I have known people who were at one
time wealthy who are now bankrupt
because they listened to somebody
prophesy how to invest their money.
I remember a dear man who was in my
meeting. I knew who he was, but I didn't
really know him. I did not know that he
would never make a business deal without
calling this so-called prophet to prophesy to
him what to do.
I said to him, "I seem to be impressed to
say this to you. You are going to lose
everything you have and go bankrupt if
you keep listening to whoever is advising
you."
He didn't listen. The poor fellow, who
was very wealthy, lost
108 How You Can Be Led By The
Spirit of God
his home and everything he had. I have
seen this happen not just one time, but
many times.
I have seen ministers who have lost their
ministries because of wrong prophecies.
You have to judge prophecies by the
Word of God. If it is not in line with the
Word of God, it is not right.
Secondly, you have to judge personal
prophecies by what you have in your own
spirit. If you do not have it in your own
spirit, do not accept it.
For years I have travelled extensively in
the ministry. Everywhere I go there is
always somebody who has a "word" from
the Lord for me—sometimes two or three.
In all these years only one or two of them
have been correct.
Do not build your life on prophecies. Do
not guide your life by prophecies. Build your
life on the Word! Let those other things be
secondary. Put the Word of God first!
People sometimes say, "Well, if God is
doing it, it has to be all right."
You have to realize that it isn't exactly
God doing it. It is men doing it by the
inspiration of the Spirit of God. Anything
that man has to do with is not perfect. The
Spirit of God is perfect. The gifts of the
Spirit in themselves are perfect. But they
certainly are not always perfect in
manifestation, because they are manifested
through imperfect vessels. This is the
reason prophecy and tongues with
interpretation need to be judged by the
Word.
Let the prophets speak two or three,
and let the other judge. If any thing
be revealed to another that sitteth
by, let the first hold his peace.
-1 Corinthians
14:29,30
"Let the prophets speak . . . . " He is
talking about prophets here—not just
everybody prophesying. Do not accept it
just because a prophet said it. It is to be
judged according to the
Guidance Through Prophecy
10
9
Bible. We do not judge people. We judge
what was said.
Now notice the 30th verse. "If any thing
be revealed to another (prophet). . . . "
Prophets have revelations. Others might
occasionally, but prophets have a ministry
along this line.
And the spirits of the prophets are
subject to the prophets.
-1 Corinthians
14:32
Some have said, "God made me do that.
I couldn't help but say that." The spirits of
the prophets are subject to the prophets.
That means you do not have to say it. It
comes out of your spirit. It is subject to
you. The gift of tongues, the interpretation
of tongues, and prophecy operate under
the unction of the Spirit. And it might be
that God through these methods would give
us a word of knowledge, a word of wisdom,
or revelation as we need it. But we initiate
the operation of prophecy. We initiate the
operation of tongues and interpretation.
We are the ones who have to speak it.
Many times when the Spirit of God is
moving, anyone who can prophesy could
do so—but that does not mean one should.
Also, when the Spirit is in manifestation,
anyone who is used in the ministry gift of
tongues and interpretation could speak—
but that does not mean he should. Have
that unction of the Spirit to do
it—otherwise just sit there and let God
move through somebody else who has it.
I held a 7-week meeting in a church
years ago. Every single night about the
same time, at the same spot in the service,
just as they got ready to pass the offering
plates, this woman got up and spoke with
tongues. She said the same thing in
tongues every night. After a while I could
have said the same things she said. If
nobody else would interpret it, she would.
It went out like cold water over the crowd.
It deadened the service.
The pastor asked me to teach the
auditorium class one
110 How You Can Be Led By The Spirit
of God
Sunday morning when he had to be out of
town. This was unusual—but I finished
before the bell rang. One of the deacons
said, "Brother Hagin, may I ask a
question?"
"Well, yes," I said. I thought it would be
in line with the lesson.
He said, "When messages in tongues
with interpretation are given in public
assembly, shouldn't they be a blessing to
the congregation? Should it kill the
service?"
That dear woman was sitting right in
front of me.
I said, "That is beside the lesson. I hate
to get into that right now."
But others, some of the leaders of the
church said, "Brother Hagin, we ought to
answer that."
So I said, "If it is in the Spirit, it will lift
the service high. It will not push it down."
That woman was intelligent enough to
catch on to that. She came to me and said,
"I am wrong, am I not?"
I said, "Yes ma'am, you are."
She said, "I thought so all the time. There
was some witness on the inside of me that
knew that. But I wanted to be used of God.
I am going to stop that."
I said, "Thank you. You are a real
blessing to the church."
Others might have gotten angry about it
saying, "They won't allow God to move."
Sometimes folks do speak out, like this
woman, without the unction of the Spirit.
This does not do away with the fact that
her tongues were real. However, they
were in imperfect operation. They were
misused.
I admonish people to be very careful
about personal prophecies. So many lives
have been shipwrecked and ruined by not
being careful about them. Don't marry
someone because somebody prophesied
you should. I have seen many such
so-called prophecies through the years. I
have never seen one of them work out yet.
Homes have been broken up by so-called
Guidance Through Prophecy
11
1
prophecies.
Don't go into the ministry because
somebody prophesied you should. Get it on
the inside of you for yourself. Then if a
prophecy confirms what you already have,
that's all right. Jesus said to me when He
appeared in that vision in 1959, "If the
prophecy confirms what you already have,
accept it. If it does not, don't accept it."
The Holy Ghost said, "Separate me
Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto
I have called them" (Acts 13:2). He had
already called them. This was just a
confirmation of it.
In the last church I pastored there was a
certain young person who was beautiful
spiritually. My wife said to me, "I believe
the hand of the Lord is on him. God is
calling him into the ministry."
I said, "I have that conviction myself.
But I am not going to call anybody. I am not
going to tell anybody they are called, even if
I know they are."
This is why. When one gets out in the
ministry it isn't always easy. Paul told the
young minister, Timothy, "Endure hardness
as a good soldier." When the way gets
hard—and it will; you can have the victory,
but it will get hard—someone who is not
convinced of the call themselves may say,
"I just went because Daddy said so." Or,
"Somebody prophesied to me. I really don't
know that I am called." But one who makes
that dedication from his own spirit, who
knows God called, will stand through hell or
high water.
So I did not say anything to this young
person. Then one Sunday night we were
all praying around the altar. I went around
and laid hands on people to pray as God
would lead me. I stopped beside this young
man who was kneeling in the altar in
intense prayer. I opened my mouth to
pray, but I heard these words come out,
"This is a confirmation to what I said to you
at 3 o'clock in the afternoon as you were
praying down in the storm cellar. You
asked for a confirmation and this is it. That
was Me
112 How You Can Be Led By The
Spirit of God
speaking to you."
After the prayer service I asked, "Were
you praying down in the storm cellar at 3
o'clock this afternoon?"
(I wanted to check up—if I am wrong, I
want to get right. If I miss it, I just admit, "I
missed it." Don't be afraid to say, "I
missed it." When I first started learning to
drive a car I missed it a few times and ran
up over the curb. But I didn't quit driving
just because I missed it. Did you? We
ought to have as much sense about spiritual
things. Just because I missed it, I am not
going to quit. I am going to keep going. I
will just see to it that I don't miss it again.
So I was checking up on it to see.)
This young person said, "Yes, I was
praying. You know, Brother Hagin, I have
felt for some time that God had a call on
my life. I didn't say yes or no. So I was
spending time down in the cellar (which
was fixed up like a nice basement)
praying, meditating, reading the Bible,
waiting on God. I felt like the Lord spoke
to me and said, 'I have called you to the
ministry— and I will confirm it tonight in
the service.' But I didn't know how He
would."
Remember—if it does not bear witness,
or confirm something you already have, do
not accept a personal prophecy.
As long as the gift of prophecy stays in
the realm of speaking to men for edification,
exhortation, and comfort, it is wonderful.
Encourage that. But many times someone
who prophesies may see a prophet minister
with a word of foreknowledge. Then he
begins to think, "I prophesy; so I can do
that." So he moves out of the place where he
should be into the other realm.
A woman came up to me in one of our
seminars we held in Tulsa. She had come
with a group from a nearby city. She said,
"Brother Hagin, this is all new to us. In
our town we have a weekly prayer group. I
want to ask you something about it. Some
of them think I am wrong, but I don't think
what we are doing is right. Actually, I
don't know if I would call it a prayer
meeting—all they ever do is lay hands
on one another and
Guidance Through Prophecy
11
3
prophesy. They spend all afternoon
prophesying over one another. And I don't
ever get anything but a bad prophecy.
"They prophesied that my mother was
going to die within six months. That was
eighteen months ago and she is not dead.
They prophesied that my husband was
going to leave me. He's not saved but he is
a fine man and I love him. He is a good
provider. We don't have any trouble.
Those are just two examples. I always get
prophecies that something bad is going to
happen—but nothing bad has ever
happened."
I said, "No, and it won't either. You are a
child of God."
She said, "Isn't that a misuse?"
I said, "Yes, it is."
We need to know these things. It is very
easy for babies to be misled and misguided.
We can get off track. That's why Paul
wrote to the church at Corinth about these
things.
26
Guidance Through Visions
"There was a certain man in
Caesarea called Cornelius, a
centurion of the band called the
Italian band, a devout man, and one
that feared God with all his house,
which gave much alms to the people,
and prayed to God alway. He saw in
a vision evidently about the ninth
hour of the day an angel of God
coming in to him, and saying to him .
. . . "
-Acts 10:1-3
'ometimes God leads through visions.
Cornelius was a devout man, but he was
not born again. He did not know about
Jesus. He was a Jewish proselyte. The
angel who appeared to him in this vision
could not preach the Gospel to him. God
did not call angels to preach the Gospel,
but men. The angel did tell him where to
send for someone who would preach to
him and tell him how to be saved.
Cornelius saw an angel in a vision.
Angels also have the ability, as God
permits, to take upon themselves a form
which can be seen with the natural eye as
you see a physical person.
Be not forgetful to entertain
strangers: for thereby some have
entertained angels unawares.
-Hebrews
13:2
115
116 How You Can Be Led By The Spirit
of God
But the Scripture calls Cornelius'
experience a vision (Acts 10:3). Therefore,
it was a spiritual vision. He saw into the
spirit world. And there are angels out there
in the spirit world. If anyone else had been
present, they would not have seen
anything. Yet if the angel had taken on a
form visible, anyone could have seen it.
There are three kinds of visions:
spiritual visions, trances, and open visions.
In a spiritual vision, you see with the eyes
of your spirit—not with your physical eye.
When Paul saw the Lord in Acts 9, it was a
spiritual vision. He did not see Him with
his physical eyes.
And Saul arose from the earth; and
when his eyes were opened, he saw
no man: but they led him by the
hand, and brought him into
Damascus.
—Acts
9:8
When the Lord spoke to him his eyes were
shut. Therefore whenever he saw whatever
he saw, he was not seeing it with his
physical eyes. And when his eyes were
opened, he was blind.
The second type of vision is when one
falls into a trance. Cornelius did not fall
into a trance—but Peter did.
On the morrow, as they went on their
journey, and drew nigh unto the city,
Peter went up upon the housetop to
pray about the sixth hour: And he
became very hungry, and would
have eaten: but while they made
ready, he fell into a trance, And saw
heaven opened, and a certain vessel
descending unto him, as it had been
a great sheet knit at the four corners,
and let down to the earth:
—Acts
10:9-11
When one falls into a trance, his physical
senses are suspended. He does not know
where he is right at the moment. He is not
unconscious, but he does not know what is
going on around him. He is more conscious
of spiritual things than physical things. The
third type of vision is what I call an open
vision. The
Guidance Through Visions
vision I have referred to so often in this
book which occurred in El Paso in 1959 was
an open vision. My eyes were wide open. My
physical senses were intact. I did not fall
into a trance. Jesus walked into my room. I
saw Him with my physical eyes.
Of all the visions I have had, only two
were open visions. Three of them occurred
when I fell into a trance. The rest were
spiritual visions.
There were different types of visions in
the Acts of the Apostles. There are
different types of visions now.
In visions, sometimes things are
symbolic. In Peter's vision they were. He
saw all manner of creeping things, both
clean and unclean. He had to think on it
(Acts 10:19). The Spirit spoke to him as he
thought and bade him go with three men to
Cornelius' house. He still didn't know
exactly what the vision meant. But when
he went, things happened, and he began to
understand that God had called in the
Gentiles as well as the Jews.
And the angel of the Lord spake unto
Philip, saying, Arise, and go toward
the south unto the way that goeth
down from Jerusalem unto Gaza,
which is desert. And he arose and
went: and, behold, a man of
Ethiopia, an eunuch of great
authority under Candace queen of
the Ethiopians, who had the charge
of all her treasure, and had come to
Jerusalem for to worship, Was
returning, and sitting in his chariot
read Esaias the prophet. Then the
Spirit said unto Philip, Go near, and
join thyself to this chariot.
—Acts
8:26-29
Some church people admit that God
spoke to the apostles such as Peter, but
they say that such divine visitations were
for the apostles only. Philip was not an
apostle. He was elected a deacon first (Acts
6:5). The highest office he ever filled was
that of evangelist (Acts 21:8). Isn't it sad
that in the church world we have been
robbed of the blessings and the
supernatural manifestations we should
have had because people closed the
118 How You CanBeLedBy The Spirit of
God
book on it and said, "That was just for the
apostles. All that ceased when the apostles
died."
And there was a certain disciple at
Damascus, named Ananias; and to
him said the Lord in a vision,
Ananias. And he said, Behold, I am
here, Lord. And the Lord said unto
him, Arise, and go into the street
which is called Straight, and inquire
in the house of Judas for one called
Saul, of Tarsus: for, behold, he
prayeth, And hath seen in a vision a
man named Ananias coming in, and
putting his hand on him, that he
might receive his sight.
—Acts
9:10-12
Ananias was not a deacon. He was just a
disciple. He was what we would call a
layman. Yet the Lord used him. We should
all put ourselves into a position where God
can use us as He sees fit. We don't have to
wait for a vision before we do anything.
God may give us a vision, or He may not.
An angel may appear, or he may not.
It was a great privilege for me to speak
in the church of a great man of God when
he was past seventy years of age. He had
been filled with the Spirit way back at the
turn of the century and had gone out to
China as a missionary back in 1912. He told
me of many marvelous experiences.
In his church every Friday night they
had a Bible study. (I believe he was one of
the world's foremost Bible teachers—and I
have heard most of them.) He related this
to me. He said he would teach certain
subjects as the Lord directed, but he also let
the congregation suggest subjects by
writing them down on a slip of paper. On
one occasion, the majority wrote, "We
would like some teaching on angels. We
have never heard any."
He had spent a number of years teaching
in one of the best Pentecostal Bible schools
and he thought he could cover the subject
in two weeks. But he said, "The more I
studied, the bigger it got. I taught six weeks
and still did not cover it."
He was an official of his Full Gospel
denomination. Soon
Guidance Through Visions
11
9
after this teaching on angels he was in a
business meeting with leaders of that
denomination. One matter of discussion
concerned the report that some minister of
their denomination claimed to have seen an
angel. He said that the angel instructed him
concerning his ministry. They were about to
read him out of the denomination.
He said, "I just sat there and listened. I
didn't even comment. I never did talk
unless I was called on to talk. I could see
the trend. They were about ready to turn
him out."
Finally, one brother got up and said, "I
believe we ought to
hear from Brother S He has been with us
from the
beginning of the movement. He is one of
our most able Bible teachers. Let's hear
what he has to say."
He told me he began by telling them
about the study of angels he had just
completed and taught in his church. Then
he said, "I am not the least bit concerned
because one of our ministers out of several
thousand has seen an angel. The thing that
disturbs me is why more of us are not
seeing some of them.
"Then secondly," he told them, "if we are
going to turn this man out for seeing an
angel who instructed him concerning his
ministry, what are we going to give our
people in the place of it? Do we have
anything better? anything more
supernatural? anything more scriptural? If
we do not, I think we had better stay with
what we have."
Quickly, someone jumped to his feet and
said, "I move that we table this and forget
all about it." They voted unanimously to
leave it alone.
In 1963, my office occupied only the den
of my little frame home in Garland, Texas.
It wasn't really much of an office at that.
Some men in another city contacted me.
They said, "If you will move your office
here, we will set up an office for you. We
will buy all the office equipment, hire the
secretaries, and pay their salaries. You
won't have to pay anything. Let's get some
of your material published."
120 How You Can Be Led By The Spirit
of God
Another man who was an electronic
technician said, "Brother Hagin, if you will
let me, I will make tapes of all your
sermons. It won't cost you a thing. I will
furnish all the materials free of charge."
Those offers sounded good. You would
think God must be in them. But about that
time I was praying with a group. We were
having special times of ministering to the
Lord. It was the kind of atmosphere Acts
13:1 and 2 speaks of—an atmosphere where
God will move.
I was sitting on the platform beside a
chair, praying, when suddenly Jesus stood
right in front of me. I had my eyes shut. It
was a spiritual vision. I did not fall into a
trance. Standing right behind Jesus, about
two feet to His right and three feet behind
Him, was a large angel. I had seen angels
before—but never one that big. He must
have been 8 feet tall or more.
Jesus talked to me about some things.
(And everything He said came to pass.)
Occasionally, while He talked, I would
glance at that angel. When I did, the angel
would open his mouth and start to say
something. When I looked back to Jesus, he
would not say anything.
After Jesus finished His conversation
with me, I asked, "Who is that fellow?
What does he represent?"
Jesus said, "That's your angel."
I said, "My angel?"
"Yes," He said, "your angel. You read in
the Scriptures that I said concerning the
little children that their angel is ever before
my Father's face. You don't lose your
angel just because you grow up."
(Isn't that comforting! I have that big
fellow following me around. Praise the
Lord!)
I said, "What does he want?"
Jesus said, "He has a message for you."
Then I got so letter-of-the-Word
conscious I could have missed the Spirit. I
said, "You are talking to me; why don't You
Guidance Through Visions
12
1
give me the message? Why do I have to
listen to an angel? Besides that, the Word
of God says as many as are led by the
Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. I
have the Holy Ghost. Why couldn't the
Holy Ghost talk to me?"
Jesus had mercy on me, and patience
with me. He said, "Did you ever read in my
Word where the angel of the Lord told
Philip to go down to the way of Gaza?
Wasn't that direction? Wasn't that
guidance? Didn't my angel appear to
Cornelius, and he wasn't even a
born-again man? Didn't the angel tell him
what to do? . . . ."
He gave me several more New
Testament examples.
Finally, I said, "That's enough. I will
listen." Then I looked up to this big fellow
and said, "What is it?"
He started this way, "I am sent from
the Presence of Almighty God to tell you
not to let these men (he called their
names) set up an office for you. They have
an ulterior motive. They will control your
ministry because they will have put in all
the money."
Then he called the name of the man
who was the radio and electronic
technician and said, "Don't let him have
any of your tapes. He has an ulterior
motive. If he gets them into his hands, he
will control them. I am sent from the
Presence of Almighty God to tell you that. "Then I am sent from the Presence of
Almighty God to tell you this. The money
will come so that you can set up your own
office, have your own books, have your
own tapes. You will be the head of it, the
sole boss, because I am going to tell you
what to do, and not some man. Within four
months, after everything is paid and cleared
out, you will have enough money to get you
headed this direction. For I have sent my
angels out to cause the money to come."
When the time came, I had $4,000,
which was enough to do what the Lord had
told me to do. That was the beginning of
this ministry.
122 How You Can Be Led By The
Spirit of God
I could tell more, but this is enough to
illustrate that these things do happen. But
let me emphasize this—although God does
lead us through visions and other
supernatural manifestations, I would
encourage you NOT to seek a vision. You
could get beyond the Word where the devil
can deceive you. We often prefer to have a
more direct word of guidance, but we don't
always have it. So don't try to manufacture
it if it is not there. Nowhere does the Bible
say that anyone was seeking a vision when
it came. They just happened without their
seeking it.
Be content, if that is all you ever have, to
follow the inward witness. But educate and
train and develop your human spirit where
that witness becomes real and more real to
you.
Then, if God sees fit for supernatural
visitations and manifestations, just thank
God for them.
Know that the angels of God are with you.
Your angel is with you whether you ever
see him or not.
27 Listen to Your Heart
"Now when much time was spent,
and when sailing
was now dangerous, because the fast
was now already
past, Paul admonished them, And
said unto them,
Sirs, I perceive that this voyage will
be with hurt and
much damage, not only of the lading
and ship, but
also of our lives." -Acts
27:9,10
JLaul did not say, "The Lord told me." He
simply said, "I perceive." In his spirit,
Paul had an inward perception, an inward
premonition, an inward witness. This is
the primary way God leads all of us.
Paul did not perceive it mentally. He did
not have some kind of "vibration." I don't
like this vibration business. It is in the
psychic realm. You do not find it in the
Bible. Paul did not perceive it physically.
In his spirit he had a witness.
That belongs to all of us. The Holy
Spirit abiding in our spirits must
communicate with us through our
spirits—not through our minds. That is
why your spirit knows things your head
doesn't know. But we have not been taught
to listen to our spirits. And sometimes we
are reluctant to do so.
The reason that we as Spirit-filled
believers continually miss it, make
mistakes, and fail is because our spirits
which should guide us are kept locked
away in prison so to speak. Knowledge, or
intellect, has taken the throne.
123
124 How You Can Be Led By The Spirit
of God
Any person who shuts his spirit away
and never listens to it—because the spirit of
man is the candle of the Lord—becomes
crippled in life and an easy prey to selfish
and designing people.
A very beautiful woman,
spiritually—my wife and I had held a
meeting for this lady pastor—told me this
herself.
An evangelist was coming to town. He
got all the churches he could to cooperate
with him in a city-wide meeting. He rented
the city auditorium. It is a sorry thing to
have to say, but everybody in the ministry
is not honest. Because this man had a poor
credit rating, the city auditorium
demanded payment in advance. So he
went through this woman pastor. She was
gullible enough to say her church would
stand responsible for $3000 rent and all
newspaper advertising. Crowds of 2000 to
3000 attended every night. He took up a lot
of money. But he left town without paying
one bill. This woman's church had to take
$5000 out of their building fund to cover
his expenses.
She told me this about it, "Brother Hagin,
if I had listened to my heart, I would never
have done that."
I said to her, "I heard you recovered your
money."
She said, "I sure did. I found out where
he was holding a meeting in another state.
I got an airplane ticket and went there.
The service had already started. I waited.
Just when they were about to turn the
service to him I marched down the aisle
and toward the platform. An usher tried to
stop me. I said, 'No, I am a minister of the
Gospel. I want to see this scoundrel.' I
walked right up on the platform and plopped
myself down beside him.
"I said, 'I have come after my $5000.1
will take the offering tonight. I brought my
attache case along. We will dump it all in
there. And I will stay around here every
night until we get it all back.'
"He said,'Well, now w e . . . . '
"I said, 'No, when they say they are going
to turn the service over to you, I am going
to take the pulpit and tell them what
Listen To Your Heart
12
5
happened. And not only that, I am going to
follow you from meeting to meeting. In
every meeting I am going to get on the
platform and make the announcement.' "
Needless to say, in two nights she had her
money and was on her way home. I glory in
her spunk.
But the point I want to make is this. She
said to me, "Brother Hagin, if I had listened
to my spirit. I don't mean a voice. I don't
even mean a still, small voice. I just mean
the inward witness. I had a check in my
spirit. If I had listened to it, I wouldn't have
stood good for his debts."
If we as individuals would have listened
to our hearts—an inward witness, or an
inward voice—we would not have done
some things we did.
I have lost money by not listening. I knew
on the inside that I should not do it. Why did
I do it? Well, why did you do it?
But just because you make a mistake,
don't quit. You don't quit physically just
because you make a mistake. If the phone
rings in the middle of the night and you
stumble over a stool and fall down trying to
answer it, you don't just lie there. You get
up and answer the phone. Just because you
bust your shins or stub your toe physically
you don't quit. And just because you bust
your shins or stub your toe spiritually you
don't quit.
As I said, the person who keeps his
spirit shut away and never listens to it
becomes crippled in life. The person who
listens to his spirit is the man or woman,
boy or girl who climbs to the top!
If Christians would just check up on the
inside of them in most of the affairs of life,
they would know what to do.
You do not need to seek guidance when
the Bible has already told you what to do.
Go ahead and do it. The Bible tells you how
to act in every circumstance of life. It tells
husbands how to treat wives. It tells wives
how to treat husbands. It tells parents how
to treat their children. It tells children how
to respond to their parents. The Bible tells
all of us to walk in love—divine love.
126 How You Can Be Led By The Spirit
of God
And that divine love, which seeks not its
own, is also a matter of the heart.
28
How To Train The Human Spirit
"The spirit of man is the
candle of the
Lord _ " —Proverbs
20:27
X he Lord enlightens us and guides us
through our spirits. If that be the
case—and it is—then we need to become
more spirit-conscious. We need to become
more conscious of the fact that we are spirit
beings, and not just mental or physical
beings. We need to train our spirits where
they will become safer and safer guides.
One thing which has held back the
Christian world as a whole is that we are
more physical-conscious (body-conscious)
and more mental-conscious (soul-conscious).
We have developed the body and the soul,
but we have left the spirit of man almost
untouched.
I have a cassette teaching tape which
has helped many in this area. One young
man I know quite well gave his testimony
of how it had helped him in one of our
recent meetings.
Just a few years ago, when he was 31 or
32, he went into business. He left his
salaried job with a total of $5500. He had to
use this money for living expenses—he was
single at the time— as well as capital. At
one point his nest egg dwindled to $50.
He gave this testimony, "I listened to
Brother Hagin's tapes. There were three on
faith and confession, and one called How To
127
128 How You Can Be Led By The Spirit
of God
Train The Human Spirit. I went to bed
every night listening to that tape. I put it
on in the morning and listened to it while I
shaved. I listened to it over and over and
over again—probably hundreds of
times—until that message got into my
spirit. Then by listening to my spirit and
using my faith, my assets now total in
excess of $30 million."
This young man is only about 38 years
old now. He is not a preacher. He is a
businessman. He has told me how his spirit
has spoken to him and told him how to
invest and buy land.
I will give the essence of the teaching
contained on that cassette in this chapter:
How To Train The Human Spirit.
Your spirit can be educated just as your
mind can be educated. Your spirit can be
built up in strength and trained just as your
body can be built and trained. Here are four
rules by which you can train and develop
your own human spirit.
1. By meditation in the Word
2. By practicing the Word
3. By giving the Word first place
4. By instantly obeying the voice of your
spirit
1. BY MEDITATION IN THE WORD OF
GOD The most deeply spiritual men and
women I know are those who give time to
meditation in the Word of God. You cannot
develop spiritual wisdom without
meditation. God made that fact known to
Joshua just after the death of Moses at the
very beginning of Joshua's ministry.
This book of the law shall not depart
out of thy mouth; but thou shalt
meditate therein day and night, that
thou mayest observe to do according
to all that is written therein: for then
thou shalt make thy way prosperous,
and then thou shalt have good
success.
-Joshua
1:8
If God did not want Joshua to be
prosperous, why did He tell him how to
prosper? If He did not want him to succeed,
why did
How To Train The Human Spirit
12
9
He tell him how to have good success? He
wanted Joshua to be successful—and He
wants you to be successful.
Paraphrasing this truth in New
Testament language, we would say, "The
Word of God—particularly the New Testa-
ment—shall not depart out of your mouth.
But meditate therein day and night, that you
may observe to do according to all that is
written therein: for then you will make
your way prosperous and you will have
good success."
If you ever want to do anything great in
life, if you ever want to amount to anything
in life, take time to meditate. Take time to
meditate in the Word of God. Start out
with at least 10 or 15 minutes a day—then
increase the time.
I left the last church I pastored in 1949
and I have been out in the field ministry
ever since. I used to do much more fasting
and a different kind of praying than I do
now. (You learn things as you go along.)
Running two services a day—which I
always did, and sometimes three—takes a
lot out of you physically as well as
spiritually. I would teach every morning,
pray out loud all afternoon, and preach
every night. I ate only one meal a day
during my meetings and by putting out so
much physical energy, I would grow weak.
Then two days a week were my fast
days—Tuesday and Thursday. I ate no food
and drank no water for 24 hours.
One day the Lord said to me, "I would
rather you would live a fasted life instead of
having days and periods of fasting."
I said, "What do you mean? I never heard
anybody say that?"
He said, "Instead of having certain days
you fast and then going back and eating all
you want, just live a fasted life. Fasting
does not change me anyhow. I am the same
before you fast, while you fast, and when
you get through fasting. It does not change
the Word. It helps you keep your flesh
under. So, just don't ever eat all you want.
Just keep it under all the time."
Then He said, "Don't spend all that time
in the afternoon praying and wearing
yourself out before the night service. Lie
130 How You Can Be Led By The Spirit
of God
on the bed and meditate."
So I began to lie there in the afternoons,
meditating. And I got further meditating
than I ever did praying and fasting. I grew
more spiritually.
That is what He is saying in Joshua 1:8.
". . . for then thou shalt make thy way
prosperous . . . ." I wanted to be prosperous
in the ministry. ". . . and then thou shalt
have good success . . . . " I wanted to have
good success in the ministry. This works
whether you are in the ministry, whether
you raise cattle, or sell automobiles, or
whatever you do.
This Word of God shall not depart out of
thy mouth. Talk about it. But thou shalt
meditate. Think on it.
The Hebrew word translated meditate
also carries this thought with it: to mutter.
Mutter it. Speak it to yourself.
The Lord led me, before I ever heard
anybody teach on meditation, to lie on the
bed and mutter the Word. I just said it to
myself. And I would have some of the most
tremendous services. I developed myself
spiritually, and at the same time conserved
my physical strength.
I like another translation of Joshua 1:8
which reads like this on the last phrase,
" . . . you shall be able to deal wisely in the
affairs of life." You could not have good
success if you did not know how to deal
wisely in the affairs of life.
Why would you know how to deal wisely
in the affairs of life? Because you meditated
in the Word of God and walked in the light
of that Word.
2. PRACTICING THE WORD
Practicing the Word means being a doer of
the Word.
But be ye doers of the word, and not
hearers only . . . .
—James
1:22
We have many "talkers about the Word,"
and even many "rejoicers about the Word,"
but we do not have many "doers of the
Word."
How To Train The Human Spirit
13
1
Begin to practice being a doer of the
Word by doing in all circumstances what
the Word tells you to do.
Some have thought that being a doer of
the Word meant to keep the Ten
Commandments. That is not what James
1:22 means. After all, we under the new
covenant have but one commandment—the
commandment of love. Jesus said, "A new
commandment I give unto you, That ye love
one another; as I have loved you, that ye
also love one another" (John 13:34).
A doer of the Word will do that. If you
love someone you won't steal from him.
You won't lie about him. The New
Testament says that love is the fulfilling of
the law. If you walk in love you won't break
any law which was given to curb sin.
Being a doer of the Word means that we
are to do primarily what is written in the
Epistles. They are the letters written to us,
the Church. As an example of doing the
Word, let us look at some instructions
given us in one of the Epistles.
Be careful for nothing; but in every
thing by prayer and supplication
with thanksgiving let your requests
be made known unto God.
—Philippians
4:6
So do that! Now we don't mind practicing
part of this verse—the part that says to
pray. But if you practice just that part and
not the first part, you are not practicing the
Word—you are not a doer of the Word.
The Amplified translation of Philippians
4:6 begins, "Do not fret or have any anxiety
about anything . ..." First we are told not to
fret. If you are going to fret and have
anxieties, it will do no good to make
requests. That kind of praying does not
work. An over-anxious prayer full of
fretfulness does not work.
I felt very sorry for a minister who came
to me some years ago. But sometimes it
doesn't give a man the answer just to
sympathize with him. Storms and tests
were on in his life. His stomach was
upset; he couldn't keep down what he ate.
He
132 How You Can Be Led By The Spirit
of God
couldn't sleep. His nerves were shot
because of a particular incident.
He came to me for help. I began to tell
him what the Word said and how to pray
about it. When I encouraged him to take
this Scripture and do it, he rebelled. He
said, "Oh, yes, but everybody doesn't have
the faith that you have."
I told him it was not a matter of having a
lot of faith, but a matter of endeavoring to
practice the Word. I told him if he would
practice the Word, his faith would be built
up. And I told him how I practice this
particular verse.
When I get alone, I read this verse aloud
and I tell the Lord that His Word is true
and that I believe it.
I told this minister that he would be
tempted to say he couldn't help worrying
and fretting. But that God had not asked us
to do something we cannot do. When God
said not to fret— that means we can keep
from it. God is a just God and He will not
ask us to do something we cannot do.
When I first began practicing this verse
it was easy to believe that I could make my
requests known unto God—but it was hard
to believe that I could not fret. However,
since God says we don't have to fret, then I
would say, "I refuse to fret or have any
anxiety about anything."
I tell the Lord that I bring my requests
unto Him. Then I thank Him for the
answer. This quiets my spirit and pacifies
the troubled spirit the devil tries to make
me have.
Then I get up and go about my business.
Before you know it, however, the devil is
trying again to get me. I simply go right
back and read this verse again and keep
claiming it.
This minister began to practice
Philippians 4:6. He told me later that the
problem worked out and did not get as big
as he was expecting. He was about to be
sued over a certain matter, but God helped
him out of it.
It is possible to become so fretful over
something you cannot eat or sleep. But all
you have to do is practice the Word and you
How To Train The Human Spirit
13
3
will get results.
Philippians 4:7 is a result of practicing
Philippians 4:6.
And the peace of God, which passeth
all understanding, shall keep your
hearts and minds through Christ
Jesus.
—Philippians
4:7
Many people want what this 7th verse
talks about—but they don't want to practice
what the 6th verse says to do to get it. The
Amplified translation of the 7th verse says,
"And God's peace . . . which transcends all
understanding, shall garrison and mount
guard over your hearts and minds in Christ
Jesus." God's peace will keep guard over
your heart and your mind.
But can you reap these results and have
this peace without being a doer of the
Word? No, you really cannot.
The 6th verse tells us not to fret. People
who worry and fret, continually think on the
wrong side of life. Verse 8 tells us what we
are to think about:
Finally, brethren, whatsoever things
are true, whatsoever things are
honest, whatsoever things are just,
whatsoever things are pure,
whatsoever things are lovely,
whatsoever things are of good
report; if there be any virtue, and if
there be any praise, think on these
things.
—
Philippians
4:8
DO verse 8. Practice this verse. Think
about the right things. Many people think
about the wrong things. You know what
they think about because of what they talk
about. The Bible says, "out of the
abundance of the heart, the mouth
speaketh." They continually worry and fret
and think on the wrong side of life—and
they continually talk unbelief. You cannot
be a doer of the Word and continue to talk
unbelief. The more you talk about some
things, the bigger they get. If something
does not meet all of these
qualifications—true, honest, just, pure,
lovely, of good report—do not think about
it and do not talk about it!
The Amplified translation of 1
Corinthians 13:7 reads, "Love . . . is ever
ready to believe the best of every person." I
have
134 How You Can Be Led By The Spirit
of God
found through the years that most of the
stories I have heard about people do not
even meet the first qualification. They are
not even true. So don't talk about the
stories you hear. Don't even think about
them. Some things you hear might even be
true—but they might not be pure and
lovely, and notice this, and of a good
report. Therefore we are not to think about
them.
By thinking about such things, we give
place to the devil. His greatest weapon is
the power of suggestion. He is ever
endeavoring to enter your thought life. That
is why we are told in God's Word to, "...
think on these things."
In the Epistles, particularly, God the
Holy Spirit is speaking to the Church. So
meditate on these letters and what He has
to say—and be a doer of the Word. You will
grow spiritually.
3. GIVE THE WORD FIRST PLACE
The training, the developing, the
educating of our spirits comes by giving
the Word of God first place in our lives.
My son, attend to my words; incline
thine ear unto my sayings. Let them
not depart from thine eyes; keep
them in the midst of thine heart. For
they are life unto those that find
them, and health to all their flesh
- -Proverbs
4:20-22
God says in this passage, "Attend to my
words (Give heed to them—Put them first):
incline thine ear unto my sayings (Listen to
what I have to say); Let them not depart
from thine eyes (Keep looking at the Word
of God); keep them (my Words) in your
heart."
There are rich dividends for doing this.
Why is it that God tells us to put His
Words first, and to listen to what He has to
say, to keep looking at His Word, and to
keep His Word in our heart? It is because "
. . . they (His Words) are LIFE unto those
that find them, andHEALTH to all their
flesh."
The margin of the King James says the
word translated health is the Hebrew
word for medicine. His Words are,
How To Train The Human Spirit
13
5
"medicine to all their flesh." There is
healing in the Word.
In the twelve years I pastored there
were members who would get sick, go to
the hospital, and afterward ask for prayer. I
am not saying that it is wrong to have a
doctor, certainly not. We believe in
hospitals and doctors. Thank God for them.
But I am saying, why not put God's Word
first. Sometimes as a last resort, Christians
will turn to the Word.
A Baptist minister, who didn't even
particularly believe in divine healing at the
time, told of how he'd had problems with
his tonsils. His doctor kept insisting that
they be removed. So the date was set.
It was his family's custom to read the
Bible and pray together each morning
before the children went to school. On the
very date he was scheduled to enter the
hospital, their Scripture passage was the
one which tells of King Asa, who got a
disease in his feet and instead of seeking
the Lord, he sought unto physicians and he
died (2 Chron. 16:12).
The minister said he was struck by this.
He realized that he had not even prayed
about his tonsils. He shared this with his
wife and children and asked that they pray
together about his tonsils.
When they prayed, the Lord told him
not to have them removed. To his
astonishment, the Lord healed the tonsils
and he has had no more trouble with them.
There is a lesson to be learned here. The
Bible does not imply that King Asa died
because he put the physicians first.
However, it does imply that he should
have put the Lord first. We should train
ourselves to put the Lord first.
We should train ourselves to ask
ourselves concerning any matter, "What
does God's Word have to say about this?"
We should ask ourselves what God has to
say about anything that may come up in
our life—and then put that Word first.
Sometimes family and friends will try to
rush you into things—but you need to think
about what the Word of God says.
136 How You Can Be Led By The Spirit
of God
Put God's Word first in every area of life.
4. INSTANTLY OBEY THE VOICE OF
YOUR SPIRIT The human spirit has a
voice. We call that voice conscience.
Sometimes we call it intuition, an inner
voice, or guidance. The world calls it a
hunch. But what it is, is your spirit
speaking to you. Every man's spirit, saved
or unsaved, has a voice.
The human spirit, as we have seen in
previous chapters, is a spiritual man, a spirit
man, an inward hidden man. He is hidden
to the physical senses. You cannot see him
with the physical eyes, nor touch him with
your physical hands. This is the man who
has become a new creature in Christ (2 Cor.
5:17). When a man is born again, his spirit
becomes a new spirit.
God prophesied through both Ezekiel
and Jeremiah that a time would come when
He would take the old stony heart out of
men and put in a new one. He said that He
would put His Spirit into us. Under the
New Covenant, this new birth became
available.
The new birth is a rebirth of the
human spirit. As 2 Corinthians 5:17 tells
us, if any man be in Christ, he is a new
creature—everything that was old in his
spirit, the old nature, is taken away, and all
things have become new.
As you give this newborn spirit the
privilege of meditating on the Word of
God, this becomes the source of its
information. Your spirit will become
strong and the inward voice of your
conscience, educated in the spirit, will
become a true guide.
Did you notice that meditation in the
Word, practicing the Word, giving the
Word first place, all come before obeying
your spirit? You see, if your spirit has had
the privilege of meditating in the Word, of
practicing the Word, of putting the Word
first— then your spirit is an authoritative
guide.
"The spirit of man is the candle of the
Lord. . . ." Your newborn spirit has
within it the Life and Nature of God.
The Holy Spirit dwells within your spirit.
" . . . Greater is he that is in you, than he
that is in the world" (I John 4:4). The Holy
Spirit
How To Train The Human Spirit
13
7
dwells in your spirit. God has to
communicate with you through your spirit
because that is where He is. Your spirit
gets its
information through Him.
Learn to obey the voice of your spirit.
If you are not accustomed to doing that,
of course, you will not get there quickly.
As we have said, your spirit can be built up
and strengthened as your body can be
built and strengthened. Your spirit can be
educated as your mind can be educated.
But just as you did not begin school in the
first grade one week and graduate from the
twelfth grade the next week, your spirit
will not be educated and trained overnight.
If you will follow these four points and
practice them, however, after a while you
can know the will of God the Father even in
the minor details of life. You will receive
guidance and will always instantly get
either a yes or a no. You will know in your
spirit what you should do.
29
Praying With the Spirit
"For if I pray in an unknown
tongue, my spirit prayeth, but my
understanding is unfruitful. What is
it then? I will pray with the spirit,
and I will pray with the
understanding also: I will sing with
the spirit, and I will sing with the
understanding also."
-1 Corinthians
14:14-15
"ne of the greatest spiritual exercises
there is, is to pray in tongues every single
day. Your spirit then is in direct contact
with the Father of spirits.
For he that speaketh in an unknown
tongue speaketh not unto men, but
unto God: for no man understandeth
him; howbeit in the spirit he
speaketh mysteries.
-1 Corinthians
14:2
It is your spirit praying when you pray in
tongues—the Holy Ghost gives the
utterance, but it is your spirit praying.
Paul said, "For if I pray in an unknown
tongue, my spirit prayeth . . . . "
I have always followed the policy of
doing a lot of praying in tongues daily. It
keeps my spirit in contact with the Father
of spirits. It helps me become more
spirit-conscious.
When you pray in tongues, your mind
grows quiet—because you are not praying
out of your mind. And once your mind is
139
140 How You Can Be Led By The Spirit
of God
quiet, you become more conscious of your
own spirit, and of spiritual things.
Get out of the sense realm. Get out of the
flesh realm. Get out of the human reasoning
realm.
Get over into the faith realm and into the
spirit realm. Faith is of the spirit—and that's
where the great things happen!